And Another Thing ... Emails From Beyond the Grave

To some it is an opportunity to exact revenge from the grave, for others it means delivering a posthumous message to their loved ones.

Either way, a service giving customers the chance to send friends, relatives or enemies an email after they have died is the latest ghoulish offering on the internet.

"This is a way of adapting the idea of leaving behind a letter in a drawer to modern times," said Alberto Iriarte, the owner of the Spanish company offering the service, The Last E-Mail.

Customers can leave messages, photographs or clips of videos.

"They can leave a few words of love, a secret, or whatever they want," Mr Iriarte said on the telephone from Brazil.

About 500 people had signed up to the service since July, he said, most of them under the age of 35.

"Our idea is that it should especially be for dealing with surprise deaths, to leave things there in case something happens," he said.

"It shocks some people, but we are trying to change the idea of death as a taboo."

Mr Iriarte said he did not know what proportion of the messages he was keeping on a secure encrypted server were loving, nasty or contained potentially explosive secrets.

"The messages they write are confidential, so not even we can look at them.

"But some people have told me they have said a last few words to their boss," he said.

Messages are not to be delivered until the deceased's trustees send a death certificate to the company.

In a dot.com world famous for ideas that burn bright and die young, Mr Iriarte said his subscription service, which gives its main address as a post office box in Spain, would still be around when those under-35s did eventually die.

"Your loved ones will be grateful ... for all the effort you put into easing their grieving," the site's publicity claims.

There is no mention, however, of how your bosses may feel if you return to haunt them from the grave.