Planning for My Kidnapping

https://blog.luap.info/planning-for-my-kidnapping.html

by polote • 6 years ago

112 106 6 years ago

blog.luap.info

noja• 6 years ago

If the kidnapper rubber hoses you* then keeps your activities active and gradually corrupts your syncthing backup, you have a problem. Time for version 2!

* https://xkcd.com/538/ (or a health emergency quarantines you without a data connection)

sandworm101• 6 years ago

>For my credentials, I use keepassXC with a keyfile + a master password, the keyfile and the password db is synced using syncthingd with a server that I rent. My legal documents are all tied in one folder on my laptop which is also synced on the same server. So basically we have all the needed documents which are synced in real time on the same server.

Sooo many eggs in one basket. Unless you are the son of an oil or shipping magnate, I suggest that your risk of being kidnapped pales in comparison to your risk of being hacked.

> Currently after 24h without changing activity a first notification is sent to my own email so that if this is a mistake I can stop the system before it is too late. And if 6 hours later I've still haven't changed of activity then a mail is sent to my parents.

30 hours? I take it that the author has not done much international traveling, or traveling generally. And they haven't worked a job involving long hours, or a back-to-back shift after someone calls in sick. For any adult, 30 hours without connectivity is not enough to trigger a kidnapping alarm.

war10255• 6 years ago

Sooo many eggs in one basket

I guess the question is whether they are encrypted or not, or how they are otherwise protected.

I keep personal info in my password store. I figure if that file gets compromised I'm pretty screwed anyway. But compromising that also requires the attacker to have my private key and the password for that key.

techntoke• 6 years ago

Same here. My biggest concern right now is with the third party browser extensions.

ghaff5• 6 years ago

For any adult, 30 hours without connectivity is not enough to trigger a kidnapping alarm.

I guess the question is what the OP considers the cost of a false alarm to be.

Because you're right of course. Lots of things can happen that put you out of communication for an extended period. Communications is more and more ubiquitous but phones and laptops break. The US still has rather large areas with no cell phone coverage. And so forth. In the past 10 years, I'm sure there have been multiple times when I've gone more than 30 hours with cellular service or WiFi.

I think it's mostly an age-related thing but a lot of people just can't imagine not being in touch almost constantly. There was a discussion just the other day where someone was worried about being tracked at protests. But "Just leave your phone at home?" basically did not compute.

In general, for a rare event, it can be a difficult problem to activate on the absence of a signal fast enough and reliably enough to be useful, without having false positives.

dividedbyzero7• 6 years ago

"Just leave your phone at home?" basically did not compute.

I wouldn't leave my phone at home either; a smartphone is the single most useful thing to have on your person when facing unexpected problems of almost any kind. And no idea about those particular protests, but protesters over here have started heavily coordinating and sharing information via phones, so you might have an actual information deficit without one.

That said, switching off cellular (or the device itself), disabling biometric auth, that might be a good idea.

msla• 6 years ago

But "Just leave your phone at home?" basically did not compute.

Your wallet contains a lot of pretty damn good ways for someone to impersonate you and rob you blind, yet "just leave your wallet at home" will stubbornly fail to compute for a lot of adults.

nsl73• 6 years ago

In the past 10 years, I'm sure there have been multiple times when I've gone more than 30 hours with cellular service or WiFi.

In the last 10 years the longest I went without Internet was during trans pacific flights, so never longer than 15 hours. I think this level of connection —- basically intermittent connection during the entire waking hours —- is super common in today’s society.

If I was disconnected for longer than 30 hours w/o prior knowledge of being disconnected it would mean something seriously bad has happened to me, and it would be nice if my next of kin had access to all the documents they would need to settle my affairs.

tzs• 6 years ago

Another way you can lose connectivity is going into an area that has too many people. I went to Madras, Oregon to view the 2017 total solar eclipse.

Madras is a small town of about 7 000 people, in a county of about 25 000 people. Estimates are that around 100 000 people came there for the eclipse. The cellular infrastructure there was not able to handle the volume.

For the ~28 hours I was there, I was never once able to view a web page via cellular internet. I and a friend who also picked Madras to watch from tried to call each other a few times, and never got through. Most text messages we tried to exchange were lost, although we did each manage to get a couple through, although those came through hours after they were sent.

We both had T-Mobile. I don't know how AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon were doing.

ponker3• 6 years ago

Depends on the upside and downside of delay, but yes, definitely expect a false trigger on a 30 hour clock. Heck you can easily just pass out and not be online for 30 hours. Trip and fall and get a traumatic brain injury and your doctor may medically induce a coma while you're being treated.

dividedbyzero7• 6 years ago

But if that happens, I expect they'd notify my emergency contacts in my phone, or at least my partner would get notified, and she'd tell everyone else who'd need to know.

polote2• 6 years ago

30 hours? I take it that the author has not done much international traveling, or traveling generally. And they haven't worked a job involving long hours, or a back-to-back shift after someone calls in sick. For any adult, 30 hours without connectivity is not enough to trigger a kidnapping alarm.

(OP here) Well I'm kind of digital nomad so traveling very often and I also maintain a Saas platform, so I basically need to be with internet access all the time, I know this may not be the case for everyone, but in my case if I'm going to be without internet for more than 12 hours I know it ahead of time

canada_dry• 6 years ago

Well I'm kind of digital nomad so traveling very often and I also maintain a Saas platform

Sounds like a dream job really. The ubiquity of internet-everywhere these days - even in third-world countries - is quite astonishing really. When I was traveling in Kenya a decade ago I was able to blog (via 2G) in the middle of the Maasai Mara!

causality02• 6 years ago

for example if my last activity is eating, then I won't eat for 24 hours, so I can trigger the alert after for example 4 hours

The author appears to be an individual who digitally documents events as mundane as eating. I don't think going days without an internet connection is a big risk for him.

Personally I just keep an encrypted flash drive with all my passwords and documents in a safe. My whole family knows the password but they don't know the combination. If I go missing they can cut the hinges off in minutes with my angle grinder. They can't access it without me finding out and hypothetical burglars wouldn't be able to decrypt it. Simple and doesn't rely on any external services.

felbane• 6 years ago

This is a pretty good approach. I hope you're periodically testing/replacing that flash drive though. I lost a few thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin because I assumed a flash drive would be fine after years of laying untouched in a desk drawer.

michaelbuckbee• 6 years ago

If you're unlucky enough to be in a natural disaster at the level of Katrina, the flooding a couple years back in Houston or a large scale earthquake 30hrs without connectivity is probable.

notdang3• 6 years ago

I am not a son of an oil magnate but I live in a country where the chances for me to get kidnapped is way higher than to be hacked.

moltar3• 6 years ago

Definitely don’t underestimate being kidnapped, if you travel.

My wife’s sister and her husband were violently attacked and almost kidnapped, but somehow managed do escape. It happened in the jungle I. Thailand.

They are very average people, from Eastern Europe without any expensive possessions or ties with rich people.

It’s still a puzzle to them why they were attacked.

duxup2• 6 years ago

I hope they're all doing well now, but I'm not sure that really says much about the likelihood of being kidnapped.

ZackJ374• 6 years ago

This is great! As a shameless plug, check out Fidelius Vaults (https://www.fideliusvaults.com): you can create an 'If I Go Missing' Folder, which can be accessed by people you trust in emergencies.

The idea is that you choose people who act as proxies in an emergency event; if something happens, a configured number of them have to approve access to your vault of documents/information before it can be viewed

whoisjuan4• 6 years ago

Wait. So if I assign 5 trustees, 5 of them need to approve in order for any of them to access the documents? IS that how it works?

docdeek• 6 years ago

From the FAQ on the site it seems you can nominate 5 but make a rule that only 3 (or 2 or 4 or whatever) need to agree. It's a balance between security and speed of access.

boarnoah• 6 years ago

Interesting company, do you happen to know of any others in that area as well (for comparisons sake).

I've been thinking it would be neat to have something like a very long term will execution/time capsule, for example to release biographies or other such information a long time in the future (say the 100+ year range).

Something like that would require a lot of things to go right, one of which is the a good expectation that the company would be around by then, for example the old banks such as Lloyds (I doubt they offer this kind of service to individuals if at all however).

Curious to know if you had any thoughts for how a service similar to that would work (or if they exist already), if its even feasible.

zie• 6 years ago

There is https://www.fidsafe.com/ operated free from Fidelity (a brokerage company that's been around a very long time).

ZackJ374• 6 years ago

While there are other document storage services, I'm not aware of any that make commitments for storing data 100+ years. For Fidelius I'm offering a 10 year notice / storage if the service ever sunsets, and I've seen similar from other companies.

The obvious concerns here are the storage media used, the DR plans for the service, and more importantly, trusting that the company will do right by you after you're gone – even if it goes under new management or bankrupts. While I always struggle to find applications for blockchain, perhaps this is a scenario where it could be useful... perhaps you could upload the encrypted data to the chain, and form a contract where the key to decrypt it is released after X years?

kanobo2• 6 years ago

I was afraid to click based on the title, but glad I did. Those were surprisingly useful tips, I can imagine someone making this a saas service...

elwell3• 6 years ago

I can only imagine the "Testimonials" section on the marketing site.

oefrha• 6 years ago

haveibeenkilled.com. Domain still available.

kanobo2• 6 years ago

Would be a great tool for those pesky ghosts who aren't aware that they are dead.

abalaji• 6 years ago

I wonder if the time bound can be reduced on something like this with things we do every day. Open Gmail/Twitter on our phone, move outside of a geo fence. For people who are actually concerned about this but can not afford a body guard, there might be an interesting service that couples with travel insurance that handles this.

nomdep• 6 years ago

The simplest time-honored solution to this is to get married and store those documents in your house

whoisjuan4• 6 years ago

What if you both die at the same time?

wackro2• 6 years ago

Wouldn't it be to have your solicitor store them along with your will?

elwell3• 6 years ago

1. Encrypt secrets

2. Don't save encryption key

3. Buy life insurance, a few million dollars

4. ...

5. Surviving spouse uses insurance pay out to spin up u-24tb1.metal AWS instances

6. Crack encryption key

7. Profit

whoisjuan4• 6 years ago

Why this doesn't exist a service? I would pay for this. I guess the complexity is giving a third party all the credentials your digital life + sensitive documents, but I would definitely pay for something that allows my family to be notified and handle all my matters in case I'm gone.

SaintGhurka• 6 years ago

It seems like it should be possible to allow a second password for something like an email account. The first password works always, but the second one only works if last login was more than n days ago. So you could give the second password to your partner or family and know they can't use it unless you're incapacitated.

whoisjuan4• 6 years ago

If 1Password had this feature that would be amazing.

jefftk• 6 years ago

For Google services there's Inactive Account Manager: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

toast0• 6 years ago

If you expect to be kidnapped, quick response would be helpful. But if you're planning for unexpected death, there's no real need to get that out in less than 48 hours; it can easily be 15 days of inactivity followed by 15 days of failing to respond to probes.

Where I live (less than an hour from Seattle), I have had power outages longer than the proposed death countdown, my DSL goes down immedidately without utility power, and the cell towers only stay online for 4-6 hours. If it starts while I'm awake, I'll let people know, but if it starts at midnight, I might be out of communication until it's over.

miguelmota• 6 years ago

What if the automated email goes to spam and nobody sees it?

bohz• 6 years ago

If the server is kept at home - with the laptop and the phone... a fire (lethal or not) would be a huge problem.

EDIT: I saw now that it is "rented" so it is remote I guess.

bonoboTP3• 6 years ago

Or just keep that stuff on an external hard drive or USB drive in your apartment, (perhaps with paper printouts if you're not worried about burglars reading them). You can even encrypt this and give your parents a printout of the master password. If they notice you are gone, they can presumably enter your flat and find your stuff if it's neatly organized.

All this software setup with various servers etc is way too fragile and hard to maintain and the lack of regular real life testing means it will probably not work the way you imagined in an actual emergency for any sort of edge case or other reason you haven't considered or you get false alarms and scare your parents with no reason etc.

ghaff5• 6 years ago

Storing stuff online with a strong but memorable password makes a fine backup. But, for most people at least those with houses, protected (e.g. firebox) storage in their homes is probably the best primary. (And even if a bunch of stuff were on a USB I'd also have printouts.)

bonoboTP3• 6 years ago

Also the online setup may be confusing to the parents, depending on their experience level. And something may break in the online setup, some update becomes necessary, some library breaks, the server is down etc. etc. Too many things can go wrong. That's fine for a low stakes hobby thing, but not really for the "I became incapacitated" alert system. Having friends check up on you, giving copies of apartment keys to trusted friends and parents, providing some form of access to your bank account to your parents if you trust them, keeping an up to date physical list of banks and other places where you store money and so on is more important.

It's already difficult to keep all this info up to date. Keeping a technical solution maintained is just extra distraction from the main points. The key difficulty is anticipating all the issues that will pop up when you actually die, practical stuff like interactions with banks etc. What will your parents need to know? What untied loose ends do you leave behind? It's uncomfortable to think about these things so most people put it off.

boring_twenties• 6 years ago

I have my doubts that any human-memorizable password can be strong enough to withstand a concerted offline attack. If what you're encrypting has to stay secret for 10, 20, 30 years (probably not the case for a password database), then it's a complete non-starter.

war10255• 6 years ago

So hijacking this a bit:

What do people have set up in case of more an "unexpected death" situation?

I have basically all information someone would need to access any of my accounts in a password repository, but I don't have the key or password shared with anyone.

Obviously that would be an issue if I was incapacitated.

What is the recommended way to handle these things?

corndoge• 6 years ago

Encrypt it all, print out the plaintext private key and put it in a small safe, give your parent/friend/so the physical key

dividedbyzero7• 6 years ago

Make sure they are actually able to do this, too, and will be able to do this years from now, when everything you may have told them will be long forgotten. Most people have no idea what gpg is, have never used a command line, and have only a really basic idea of how encryption in general works.

Grimm1• 6 years ago

I've been thinking about this a bit. Safety deposit box at a bank for sensitive info, draft a will with a lawyer with instructions of who to give the box's keys to and leave the keys with the lawyer and copy of the will. Then give the contact information of the lawyer to any party you believe should contact the lawyer for said will if you die and keep a "in the case this person is dead or severely incapacitated call this number" card in your wallet in a prominent space. That's what I've worked up so far.

ghaff5• 6 years ago

Either a safe deposit box or a fireproof box. The former is a bit safer. The latter has more space than most safety deposit boxes and makes it easy to add/replace documents. Arguably at least documents that aren't especially sensitive but are important (e.g. insurance information) can be in the cloud somewhere and you can give a lawyer (and/or people you trust) the password.

scollet• 6 years ago

Time-locked safe with an encrypted hardware dongle whose key is hidden in volumes of relevant literature classics and personal notes, buried at the end of a cave, at the end of an elaborate treasure hunt, of course.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 6 years ago

Out of curiosity, what kinds of accounts do you have that are so important that they are worth preserving in the event of your death? I can only think of financial stuff and those already have beneficiaries and whatnot specified when I set them up.

war10255• 6 years ago

I can only think of financial stuff and those already have beneficiaries and whatnot specified when I set them up.

My financial accounts are probably the main things. I don't know that I have any beneficiary stuff set up on them.

I was maybe overly specific in my asking.

Basically the thing I am wondering is:

What do I need to have in place to make sure my wife / kids have access to my assets, etc. in the event that I die unexpectedly?

dividedbyzero7• 6 years ago

Social media presences come to mind, especially anonymous ones. I'd like my online friends to know I won't be back. If you have a blog, or otherwise publish, at least a brief announcement there might also be something you'd want to happen.

It would make cancelling subscriptions not needed anymore or transferring them to another person much easier I guess.

bluGill• 6 years ago

I'm more worried about my pictures of the kids. A few generations will care about them.

dividedbyzero7• 6 years ago

1Password family accounts can have multiple admins; my partner and I are both admins and can reset each others passwords and disable MFA in the event that such a thing should become necessary; that's handy in another way as well, as we also have our parents as non-admin users in there, and we're able to reset their passwords if they forget them etc.

Both our accounts have strong passphrases and are secured with MFA of course.

yosamino• 6 years ago

I maintain an encrypted vault-file containing some instructions and passwords accessible at a url that is printed on a piece of paper. Along with it is a "share" of a password which I split up using SSS[0]. I laminate those along with a piece of dark cardboard (to make it more difficult to peek) and instructions.

They are distributed among friends and family to be cut open in the event of my death.

It's based on the trust that not more than 5 of those 10 people will conspire against me while I am still alive, but also at least 5 of them will be able to find one another, and unlock the password should I pass.

... good reminder, it's due for an update

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing

ZackJ374• 6 years ago

This is exactly something I intend to add to my document storage platform... I have some notes about it here: https://www.fideliusvaults.com/roadmap/. There's a balance of security and convenience that I've been calling the 'paranoia scale', and this sits on the far end towards 'least convenient, most secure'.

war10255• 6 years ago

I have heard of Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm a few times in the past six months or so.

Today I finally decided to read the Wikipedia page and figure out how it works.

Really neat. Uses the fact that you need `k` points to uniquely define a `k-1` degree polynomial.

So if you want the secret to be recoverable by any `k` pieces, you just need to define a `k-1` degree polynomial and generate a series of points along that curve, with the secret at a known location on the curve

Basically it sets your secret to the polynomial constant term (i.e. the y value for x=0), generates random coefficients for the rest of the polynomial factors, and then computes however many points you requested. The shares are just encoded (x,y) pairs.

There is slightly more complicated math it to better obscure the secret, but in essence that's all it is. I thought that was really neat.

duxup2• 6 years ago

Buried in Google's settings you can set up a system that will hand over your account (or even delete it) to someone you specify if some events play out like not logging in and etc.

robrenaud2• 6 years ago

Is it possible to embed a GPS on yourself that is periodically reporting your location?

jcun41282• 6 years ago

Tangent: I was thinking of a "deadman's switch wipe protocol" and other services as a result of your death eg. donating your assets or something. Would have to be pre-setup. Would be interesting to address false alarms.

Someone• 6 years ago

I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think “Donating your assets” would work (in any jurisdiction, but as I said, I’m not a lawyer, certainly not one versed in law in all countries of the world). Lawyers will argue that the fact that you set this up x months before death doesn’t mean that you still wanted it to happen when you died and/or that, at the time the assets were transferred you weren’t alive, so you couldn’t own the assets.

Yes, last wills do both, too, but they have a long history with lots of jurisprudence about what you can and cannot arrange for after you die, and how you should arrange that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_and_testament#Requirement...)

wackro2• 6 years ago

You mean, like a phone?

Jaruzel• 6 years ago

There's a chain of problems here. You'd need an open source GPS tracking app on your phone that has the rights to record and upload your location to a server whilst running in the background, then you need a personal server to store that stuff on, and then you need to find someone who knows what to do with that lot if and when you disappear.

robrenaud2• 6 years ago

No, clearly whoever kidnaps you is going to take your phone away. I mean something that probably gets embedded under your skin somewhere.

elwell3• 6 years ago

1. Encrypt secrets

2. Don't save encryption key

3. Buy life insurance, a few million dollars

4. ...

5. Beneficiary uses insurance payout to spin up some u-24tb1.metal AWS instances

6. Crack encryption key

7. Profit

gruez• 6 years ago

Only the problem is the the opportunity cost of the life insurance. What information can you possibly keep that's worth more than a few million dollars? For most people it's probably better to keep the insurance payout than it is to spend it on aws cracking.

nordsieck• 6 years ago

Only the problem is the the opportunity cost of the life insurance. What information can you possibly keep that's worth more than a few million dollars? For most people it's probably better to keep the insurance payout than it is to spend it on aws cracking.

Also, you have to keep the encrypted treasure a secret, or someone else with money could snatch it out from under the heirs.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 6 years ago

It is an interesting plan.

I will admit that I am way more interested as to why someone is planning that ( I had a boss who had a reputation for being a major pain in the ass and once gave me a speech how she is prepared for being kidnapped and few other uncommon eventualities ).

Then again, I may be looking at it this through US lens. It may be a more common issue in other places ( like Africa maybe )?

Jommi• 6 years ago

I was going to say a simialr thing, but I would definitely not discount US from the discussions.

If I was veryvery rich and working in an industry that is suspicous at all, and I was located in USA or a South American or African country, I dont think preparing for kidnapping would be so out of the question.

JD557• 6 years ago

The link is random generated link available only 6 hours, this is important to be safe as you don't want anyone to be able to access all your passwords ...

This seems like too short of a duration. What happens if the email is sent between 23:00-01:00 (your parents timezone? They are probably asleep and the email will expire at 5-7AM. Will they see the email in time?

mercora2• 6 years ago

i want to point out that the way the addresses in the image of the mail is hidden appears to be easily recoverable even with plain eyes. Also, if you really think the likelihood of someone kidnapping you is somewhat high and you are preparing for that i would imagine posting about how it works is pretty counterproductive....

notdang3• 6 years ago

not sure where the author is but the kidnappers around here don't care about these details. They are the generic fb/whatsapp users.

mercora2• 6 years ago

i am not sure you got that right from me. i probably should have made clear these are meant to be separate statements.

what i actually meant is the stuff he describes on how he expects this to work for him. for example a kidnapper would already know the best time to kidnap him is after he had lunch because that's a recorded activity which resets the timer. they also know he will send location data so they might take his phone on a different tour directly after kidnapping and there is probably more usable information in this post...

however, i assume here this is a kidnapping specifically targeting someone with proper due diligence. but that might not be very realistic at all and you actually are telling me about it. referring to them as fb/whatsapp users just made me think you might talk about technical aspects they would not get but i think there is more to it that might be easier to comprehend.

fuber2018• 6 years ago

If you are missing, then authorities usually like to have a recent photo of you to aid in the search.

I don't see an explicit reference to "recent image of me" in your "First step" list of data - photos in legal docs/credentials may not accurately represent your current physical appearance.

polote2• 6 years ago

Hey, this is a very good remark, I'll try to do something about it, thanks

Sodman• 6 years ago

I would absolutely not trust my life in an emergency situation based on my parents seeing an e-mail within 6 hours of receiving it, let alone filling out a rate-limited survey correctly and then figuring out how to SSH into a remote server and download some documents.

ravenstine• 6 years ago

Yeah, that seems nuts. I'm a guy in my 30s and I regularly go longer than that without checking my email. In fact everybody does, when they sleep! If the email is sent even a few hours into your parents sleeping, the whole exercise will be entirely pointless even when everyone does the right thing.

jeffrallen• 6 years ago

The technique this guy wants is Shamir's Secret Sharing. Look it up.

moltar3• 6 years ago

What if you are on vacation with your parents and you get kidnapped.

cafard• 6 years ago

Or, you could just drop dead.

A DBA I had worked with years ago disappeared from work. Nobody on the contract knew where he was. After a week or so, his parents, who lived maybe 100 miles away, called the contract manager. He discovered that the man was in the county morgue as John Doe, having been found dead on the sidewalk outside his apartment, without ID on him.

I assume most HN readers are

- younger than the DBA, who was probably in his mid-fifties - in better condition, for he was obese - in a wider social circle, for he was pretty anti-social

Still, it isn't bad to have people who will know that you have disappeared.

koziserek2• 6 years ago

when I'm dead, I'm not going to worry about it.

koziserek2• 6 years ago

when I'm dead, I'm not going to worry about it

BrandoElFollito• 6 years ago

I live in France where you need zillions of documents to go pee. You can imagine what happens when you want to take over a bank account...

There is very low risk for someone having access to my bank account to actually do something with it.

So am my important information is on google docs, shared with the people I trust.

By far (very much far) I want to be sure that the information is available without the need for physical access and up to date.

Planning for My Kidnapping

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