OK, this may be a bit of a tangent to what we usually write about here, but I spotted this on TechCrunch and just had to share.  A company called Legacy Locker has identified an overlooked need in the process of dying and moving on—what to do with all your data.

Gaining access to a deceased person’s email accounts, files, and other pieces of digital existence is currently a miserable process, especially when IDs and passwords are only in that person’s head. As often as not, the executor and survivors simply abandon it all unless it has financial relevance. Legacy Locker provides a secure service ($30/year or $300 for a lifetime) that stores login information and passes it to the people you choose when you die or are completely disabled. As described by the company:

It’s like a digital safety deposit box – you can put all your online accounts (emails, photos, social networks, everything online that requires a login) in it. For every account you store, you can assign a beneficiary, someone to whom you want to entrust your digital assets for the future. In the unfortunate event of your death or should you become incapacitated, Legacy Locker securely passes your account information on to your named beneficiaries.

It might seem frivolous, but this is a real need, as more and more of us live a greater percentage of our lives online. In the chaos that surrounds death, wills, and final arrangements, online assets are too easily overlooked. The ability to leave your Facebook account to your niece may be of questionable value, but the ability to easily terminate the account isn’t. (Leaving your World of Warcraft account and characters to your niece, on the other hand, can be extremely valuable.) Photo albums, email, and social networking all cease to become a source of stress for your survivors.

Of course, this is one account for which you’d want iron-clad security—somebody finding out your ID and password for this site has a one-stop identity theft shop. The entire site is secure —Legacy Locker is the first site I’ve noticed where even the home page is “https”—so one can figure they’ve thought about that already.

So, faithful readers. Legacy Locker’s online-identity will: smart new service or a carrion bird feasting on people’s insecurity?