Yahoo Ending strives to make a death easier, digitally
When it comes to dealing with a person's online identity after they die, things are still murky — there's no right answer about turning Facebook pages into memorials or outright deleting a Twitter account. Yahoo Japan is hoping to make things more clear with its new offering, Yahoo Ending.
The service will deactivate accounts upon death, and can delete documents, videos, and photos from online storage accounts. If the person used Yahoo Wallet for subscriptions, those can also be canceled. "Yahoo Japan's job has been to solve social problems through the power of the internet and to provide services from the cradle to grave," spokeswoman Megumi Nakashima told The Washington Post. "We had services for the cradle part but not the grave part."
When a person signs up for Yahoo Ending, they receive a unique number and instructions to give that number to someone they trust, who will call Yahoo Japan upon their death. Once a cremation permit is sent over to Yahoo from a funeral home, Yahoo will send out an email written by the dead person to as many as 200 email contacts, quickly spreading the word of the person's passing. Yahoo Ending also plans funerals and can find graves. A basic package starts at $4,500, and includes the funeral, cremation, embalming, and a wake for 30 people (more are extra).
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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