Show HN: Deadman.io - a digital dead man's switch
deadman.io
deadman.io
As for the trust issues, you can easily just say "look under the porch in my house", you don't have to reveal all the information there. Or, just encrypt things.
A problem with that is that people can have custom intervals per-message, so they can have one for "I'm missing for a day", one for a month, etc, so there's no "one" switch. I could make one, though, I guess.
I think the ultimate solution is a dead man's switch that is tied to something physical, aka a password in a bank vault that unencrypts a file somewhere. Yes, you have to trust the bank, but it's unlikely the bank knows what to do with this random password.
This is what I do - all my passwords and super-secret stuff is in an encrypted file with the passphrase something I have memorized. It's also written down and stored in a secure location that my wife has access to, should something bad happen to me. I don't care if she accesses this password when I'm not dead - it's only in a secure location to prevent accidental disclosure (theft) of it.
Like you note with your current setup, the passphrase is useless on its own.
Or store encypted file in one deadman.io switch, and the passphrase in another switch (in another account). The evil owner of said website, shouldnt be able to connect the two. (whats the chances they going to arbitarly try decoding every file they have with every passphrase they have)
As it even notes on the page its 'running on free quota' - hardly something to actully be trusted with life or death information.
A cool tech demo, not a 'premium' service.
The website is missing the password, and the recipients don't have the file until the website gives it to them.
(Clearly this still isn't (and can't ever be) sufficient though: bribery/threats of violence/blackmail by either party towards the other.)
Alternatively, let the dead man's switch alert heirs to swap their half of the password, so that all heirs now have the full password. Then you don't overly depend on the dead man's switch.
Once it earns some trust, it could offer to sell your startup/website/app to someone that would do a good job of maintaining it (or release it as open source).
If it ever does become a service for real I'll need to do some work to secure it, add features, etc.
Sorry, I don't mean to diss your thing, it's a nice idea. I'm just sick of all the exaggerated reliability claims of these startup projects. Maybe I'm crazy, but if you claim "100% durability" on something fairly important, you're taking on serious responsibility. What are the odds of this site working in three years? Three months?
But you never get 100%.
He also had a pretty funny presentation, pretty tongue-in-cheek.
Sorry to out you buddy!
Deathless data
What happens to our digital property after we die?
http://www.economist.com/node/21553011
"..Service providers have different rules—and few state them clearly in their terms and conditions. Many give users a personal right to use an account, but nobody else, even after death. Facebook allows relatives to close an account or turn it into a memorial page. Gmail (run by Google) will provide copies of e-mails to an executor. Music downloaded via iTunes is held under a licence which can be revoked on death. Apple declined to comment on the record on this or other policies. All e-mail and data on its iCloud service are deleted on the death of the owner.."
It's super easy to add email accounts with this: https://www.dailycred.com (I'm a co-founder)
Sounds like a suboptimal configuration for a dead man's switch. If you're unavailable, you aren't around for contingencies.
Personally I would never use a service like this for anything that needs to be secure. That's nothing against you more my own paranoia and honestly if it was some password to decrypt my files I'd just give it in a letter to the person I trust not surprise her with an email after I die which she'd probably cry over for days.
I'd probably consider using it to just tell the people I love that I'd miss them and what impact they had on my life.
I really don't get the draw about sending passwords, life insurance policies, and other secure data when you're dead. Would my family and loved ones care about any of that if I was gone? Probably not and if the information I stored was useful to them I'd have given them a way to access it offline in the event something happened.
Not against the service I think it's a great idea just think for the non-developers out there they'd probably prefer something closer to the heart to be sent.
Note: I know you didn't really suggest people send super secret things on the site just saying it in response to what everyone else is posting.
More seriously, I think the core technology would be useful for elderly, people going on hikes into remote areas, etc.
A lawyer can make such a judgment call without falling back to the binary decision of "has the time elapsed with no check-in?".
You could say, I have a bunch of documents that implicate you and they'll be sent out to authorities should I not answer my email or phone at N time.
There's a web-hook switch which is intriguing, though I haven't come up with a good use case yet.