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Cybersurfers search for death and taxes online

NEW YORK: It was inevitable. Death and taxes have come to the Internet.

The most popular terms used to search the Web through Lycos Inc. this week uncovered two trends - people are looking for information on how to deal with the Tax Man, and others are looking for a peek at the Grim Reaper.

Already reaching as high as No. 5 in a list of popular search terms on Lycos, "IRS" could reach number one in the coming weeks, with "tax forms" not far behind, Lycos said. Others are searching for "tax tables" to determine which bracket they are in.

Three weeks before the annual income tax filing deadline for U.S. residents, the tax information searches are logical enough, but the emergence of death as a trend on the Web is not as easily explained away.

Searches for photos of dead people, and the emergence of memorial sites for dead relatives and even dead pets have combined to form a bizarre new virtual death phenomenon.

The term "Death Penalty" entered into the top 50 Lycos search terms this week, at number 49.

"I thought this could be due to George W. Bush and Texas being in the news, given all the executions down there," said Lycos Top 50 compiler Fritz Holznagel in reference to the U.S. presidential candidate and Texas governor.

Recent Benetton clothing ads that featured Death Row prisoners may have also sparked interest in the condemned, Holznagel said, though searches for "Death Row" were difficult to track given the popularity of a rap record label with the same name.

But more bizarre is that as many as hundreds of cybersurfers have searched Lycos for "Black Death" in recent weeks.

It was unclear if they were referring to the bubonic plague, or an obscure board game called Black Death. (Each player takes the role of a different disease, and whoever wipes out most of Europe wins!)

Holznagel said he was not sure if the game was popular enough for the Black Death to become such a trendy search term.

"It may just be students doing their homework," he said.

But far more gruesome are searches of death photos and pictures of death.

"People seem to have a deep curiosity about what dead people look like and we get lots of queries like this," said Holznagel.

One site in particular that is often requested is Faces of Death (http://www.facesofdeath.com). The site, which bills itself as "a timeless collection of the sick twisted and subhuman," is full of photos of gory suicides and other gruesome deaths.

Searches for another popular death photo site, called Gore Gallery, is searched for often enough to have made it difficult to analyse the cyber-popularity of presidential candidate Al Gore, Holznagel said.

Another grim realities site is the Death Clock, (http://www.deathclock.com) where you can enter your date of birth and a big clock tells you how much time you have left, based on actuarial tables.

There is also the Dead People Server (http://dpsinfo.com) which answers questions such as "Isn't Don Knotts dead?" (No, he isn't.) The site lists 2000 other actors and celebrities who might plausibly be dead, and tells you their status.

Another popular request is for the Social Security Death Index, used by geneologists to trace their ancestors.

Other death sites that are growing in popularity range from ones that seek to expose funeral and cemetery industry secrets, to a pet funeral parlour, to one for a self-described obsessed bagpiper available for funerals.-Reuters