Facebook status update: So I've died...

Unless you're like me and obsessed with the morbid, you may never have wondered what happens to your online life when your real life ends. What happens to your Gmail account? How do your survivors de-activate your PayPal account? Perhaps most vexing: Who updates your Facebook page and alerts far-flung friends to stop sending you cupcakes?

Turns out somebody had this very thought and decided to create a company to take care of such things. Legacy Locker, an online service announcing itself on Tuesday, is a sort of "safety deposit box" for your online world. Jeremy Toeman, co-founder of the San Francisco start-up, told reporters that this service will prove helpful to bereaved who can rest easy that their deceased loved ones' online profiles, relying on it to alert all the pertinent places instead of having to deal with it themselves.