Dead man's switch via email | Hacker News Reader

Dead man's switch via email

deadmansswitch.net

42 pointsshard31 comments

This is a solution looking for a problem. Writing a will allows you to settle your financial affairs as well (or at least try). You can attach a message to your will and it's much less likely to be sent out in error.

What I'd like to see is some way of easily granting access to your online accounts (eg gmail, facebook, flickr) linked to a will. You could keep all your passwords in an encrypted keychain that's synced with an online service and store a master password in your will. That way relatives and friends would be able to access all the stuff that used to be in hard copy letters, diaries and photos.

But what if you are a drug dealer, and you suspect your boss is going to kill you. You want to use the old "if anything should happen to me, a friend will mail a package into the FBI" insurance policy, and you want it to be automated?

There have to be at least 10 or 20 people who want this.

Sounds like an easy way to harvest passwords and other such important information..

hey I'm just saying... gotta be aware of potential agendas

He specifically points out that you should encrypt your emails.

touché

You encrypt them, but then how does anyone decrypt them? Do you have to pre-brief "normal" people about how to use PGP?

It would be nice if there was a service that you could actually trust that would store the information in an encrypted file but then allow the correct people to access it.

Well in that case you setup another identical email-loved-ones-when-i-die service to send a PGP key and passphrase.

i can just imagine the e-mails from that service getting blocked by some anti-spam mechanism along the way, causing it to broadcast your message, and your friends and family freaking out thinking you're dead.

...or the other way around, for your all-important e-mails to get filtered by anti-spam mechanisms and lost forever.

http://www.mylastemail.com/

edit: This is a very old idea.

Why in heavens name does his link to the open id provider have an affiliate number in it? Lord, this open id thing is getting more sleazy by the minute.

This is an interesting idea. However, what assurance do you have that this service will still be running when you need it?

http://www.deadmansswitch.net/about/

"Since this service is provided free of charge, it comes without any warranty, neither express nor implied (even the actual sending of the messages is not guaranteed, but we'll do our best)."

If you were going to actually use this service it would be more fulfilling to pay and have some guarantees.

side note: I wonder if they are relying on two-form viral growth :).

Guarantees on something like this wouldn't be all that worthwhile, unless you intend to eat their brains when it doesn't work right. :)

you can guarantee the farm considering the person you promised stuff would be dead.

You still are obligated to the estate of the dead person.

well if you never sent anything, they'll never know they had any email coming

This would be better as a paid service, where a large sum is deposited up front and placed into a financial instrument that then would guarantee the delivery (such as an annuity to cover operating expenses)

The owners need a coherent and persuasive argument that they are providing a service just as important as a will or a trust. For that, you can (and should) be charging money. This ain't twitter, it's your legacy.

You could even do tie-ins with life insurance policies and pre-paid burial plans. It'd be a nice add-on and there are lots of existing potential partners in place and with tight customer contacts.

Gee -- now I'm almost at the point where I'm starting to outline a business plan. Better shut up, or I'll want in on the action :)

There already exist plenty of expensive ways to do this. You could, for instance, add it to your will. Or get a safe deposit box, put some envelopes in there, and mention the safe deposit box in your will. Or just leave letters with your lawyers (who are also keeping your will).

Agreed. Which means there is already a market with market players involved. I think that's good news, not bad.

So what are your differentiators? Well you're virtual, not physical. So you can be changed easily. Plus you can offer all sorts of interactive multi-media instead of paperwork. You could electronically interact with other services, such as FaceBook or MySpace, where other older services couldn't.

I'd use my differentiators (and there's more than I listed) to explore some market niches.

There's nothing wrong with trying to create an entirely new market with a free service. To me, that's swinging hard for the home run. Or you could just take a good base hit and enjoy what you can get. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. I do think that we startup types usually think big. "Big" is a very relative term -- a successful entry in an existing market could be a lot better risk/reward scenario than making it all up from scratch.

You could electronically interact with other services, such as FaceBook or MySpace, where other older services couldn't.

I like the idea that I can authorize somebody to change my facebook status to "Hugh is dead". It would be embarrassing if it were stuck for all eternity on, say, "Hugh is going skydiving".

Realistically I think it'd be difficult to persuade people to give money to a brand new startup for a service which probably won't be delivered for decades. But maybe you can think of a way to do it, especially if you somehow tie yourself to some long-lived, trustworthy organization that people can be more confident will still exist in a century's time.

Yes. By kicking this around a bit, I'm a little clearer on my original comment.

My thoughts are: great site and idea! How are you going to bond with customers? Because you gotta get out there and live with your customers, and so far all I see is an idea.

So fix the customer idea -- find and tightly identify a niche. Find the people who are already living with them and become their best friend. Take your problems -- lack of big name, lack of surety, etc, and turn them into assets.

The site appears to promise features that don't exist in the app.

From TFA: "The emails are sent in configurable intervals. If you don't answer the first, you will get a second and a third one. If you don't answer those either, your switch will be activated. Of course, you can have your switch postpone its activation (if, for example, you'll be away for some time) by telling it to not try to contact you for a specified period of time."

Yeah, well I can't find this functionality. It's just a sign up + add an email toy app. What a shame, I wanted to have a fiddle with the settings (in my opinion, the most interesting part).

This is the sort of service that, if you're providing it for free, you really ought to just open source the code so anyone can set their own up.

One could also use an email with the "will" to a special mailbox as a switch to activate some processes that could do all kind of stuff..

Plenty of good uses for a service like this. http://www.raptureletters.com/

I always appreciated this one more: http://postrapturepost.com/

Won't work - unless providers employ some heathens - all will go to heaven.

And who wants to do business with infidels?

hence: dead man switch

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