Dead Man's Switch

http://beta.deadmansswitch.net/

by coderdude • 15 years ago

185 99 15 years ago

beta.deadmansswitch.net

wccrawford3• 15 years ago

Interesting, but potentially disastrous, depending on your email contents, if the company messes up.

For this, I'd rather have a lawyer, a safe, a bank box... Anything that would end up dealing with my friends and family if I died.

corin_• 15 years ago

I concur, with the following additional reasons. First, depending on what you meant by "mess up": there's a chance they're not trustworthy (would read something you don't want read), and there's also a chance they screw up (and lose what you want sent - or send it when it shouldn't be sent).

Perhaps an even bigger thing for me is that an email seems so... off-hand, informal. I think if a friend/relative/etc died and an email was automatically sent to me from them I would feel a lot less... less something, can't quite think of the word, than if I got a properly written letter. Less sentimental I guess, less appreciative of it.

wccrawford3• 15 years ago

I actually hadn't even considered that they might read my letters without me knowing. I simply meant that a server went bonkers, or some bad code made it live and they accidentally sent my mails early.

As for the informal, bit... I certainly wouldn't let my mother be informed this way. But friends? That's how I mainly communicate with them anyhow.

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

Hey guys, I read the entire frontpage and somehow missed this story: I made Dead Man's Switch, and the beta is the second iteration, hosted on GAE. I certainly didn't expect it to be HNed so early.

These are all valid concerns. This isn't meant to replace wills or lawyers, it's just something to tell your friends to maybe look for you in the mountains if you don't respond in X days.

Some people also had the idea of using it to monitor infirm/elderly people, so I wrote this second version to hopefully have more flexibility to interface with phone/sms/etc.

I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have!

leif• 15 years ago

the "beta" in the url doesn't make this feeling any better

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

This is the beta rewrite that only launched two days ago or so. The main site (http://www.deadmansswitch.net) has been running since 2006, I think, with no issues.

I took care to write loads of tests for the email sending bit specifically, too, but I wouldn't want people to add their sensitive emails before it's a bit better tested in actual use, hence "beta".

riffraff• 15 years ago

I have the feeling the idea is to have mails go to stuff like your projects mailing lists or online friends, more than managing your real life heritage.

wccrawford3• 15 years ago

Oh, I would never trust actual will-type stuff to it, that's for sure. But I certainly don't want a 'I died, sorry!' message going out to my mailing lists prematurely, either.

s2r24• 15 years ago

Something similar could be constructed using Shamir's Secret Sharing (for example) [1], where the involved parties would have to communicate (and thus know each other) to retrieve the secret from their parts. The linked service surely is easier to handle but such a scheme would not depend on any trusted host (except yourself as you know the secret and share the parts). Possibly a combination of both would be great, to ease the communication issue and still keep security high.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing

Sniffnoy3• 15 years ago

I'm a little unclear on what problem you're trying to solve. Are you saying you should wait for a second place to set up such a service, sign up for both, and use a simple secret sharing scheme[1] to ensure that only once both go out does anyone know the original message? Or does that not solve the problem you were talking about?

[1]Which in this case would probably just be -- since in this case you don't want it to be reconstructible without all the pieces, and there's not much need for there to be more than 2 -- picking a random string of bits, sending that to one and the XOR with the original to the other.

cjdavis• 15 years ago

Here's how it would work: You decide how many different friends and family you are going to send your secret message to, and how many of them will need to agree to unlock the message together. Let's say you pick 15 recipients and 8 need to agree. Then ANY 8 of the 15 messages can be combined to decrypt the secret.

No 3rd party service needed at all.

Couldn't you encrypt the results again with different numbers? So you could do interesting things like 'my wife AND (any 3 of 50 others)'

s2r24• 15 years ago

> I'm a little unclear on what problem you're trying to solve.

So am I, actually, sorry. My initial thought was that a central authority (a host that might go down or bankrupt) could be avoided if I were to split my secret into parts, distribute them among my loved ones (telling them what it is about and that I trust them they'll not meet behind my back while I'm still alive), accompanied by instructions how it works. This way, there's no plain text of my super secret stored anywhere.

This solves the "my secret should be known by my peers when _something happens_"-issue. The "inform the others if something happens to me"-problem actually persists and for _this_ problem, a service like the one posted probably is a solution, sending out "the person has not been reachable for X days, please meet and uncover his secret"-mails to the peers.

jsherer• 15 years ago

Sounds like an interesting idea. But, like others, I am skeptical relying on a "beta labeled" web service to handle this for me.

rufibarbatus2• 15 years ago

The beta is for a "new and improved" version. If you remove beta from the address, you can access the current let's-call-it "stable" version.

I played around with this a while ago. Didn't think the way it's implemented solves the problem as I perceive it. (Plus, the risk of these confirmation emails ending up in spam felt a bit like a downer.)

dgunn4• 15 years ago

This is why I decided to make one of these. I wanted to do it, but I was too worried that it could go wrong. We're doing this but without the "keep-alive" emails. You just sign up, and we know when you die. This unfortunately limits us to the US right now. But if it shows promise, we'll expand.

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

I want to eventually integrate Twilio so it can call you and have you enter a PIN to check in, rather than email, or something to that effect (maybe reply to an SMS?).

That's for a bit further ahead, though.

elliottcarlson• 15 years ago

I remember a service like this at least 6 years ago, possibly much longer - would be interesting to see if they are still around and if they ever had to "activate" for anyone.

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

This service has been around since 2006, probably earlier (I can't remember when I first built it), so this might be the same one.

cdibona• 15 years ago

I all but launched to users one of these in 1999 (deathswitch, I even let the domain lapse in 2003) and decided that I'd have two kinds of customers, those I didn't want to be responsible for , and nutters. Didn't launch. Happy to see this person do so!

dgunn4• 15 years ago

There are a surprising number of services that do this. No one seems to have gotten any traction though. We decided to make it a video service instead of an email service.

We're actually launching our version this friday. If you read this after Aug 19th, it will be at http://senotable.com but right now it's at http://beta.senotable.com. Bugs are basically worked out now if you want to check it out. We'll probably advertise the launch on HN Saturday.

pxlpshr• 15 years ago

We've been working on a product very similar to this for a long time. Traction is difficult, and few people respond well to fear mongering and/or premeditative thoughts that their life may be in danger. In addition, top of mind is also a challenge because the nature of an emergency creates an overload of emotion and therefore often confusion.

The social venture fund I work for provides this product for free because we service underserved and often low-income people in high crime areas around the world. Unfortunately we haven't made the product itself more accessible but we are working on an Android app that will function on some of the cheapest Android phones.

http://www.buddyguard.org

rheide• 15 years ago

I've actually been looking for this for a long time. I like to travel around and often wonder what will happen to my digital legacy (code, internet bank accounts, subscriptions to all kinds of things, scanned documents). My previous solution was to e-mail an encrypted file to my parents and give them the password to it on a note, which was then put in the safe. I'll try the site but I'm a bit wary of whether or not it actually works. After all, if you disappear off the face of the planet then you won't be able to check that it actually works.

Edit: it also seems like a perfect target for hacking, as people may write information there that evil people could profit from greatly.

pavel_lishin• 15 years ago

> Edit: it also seems like a perfect target for hacking, as people may write information there that evil people could profit from greatly.

Also, law enforcement.

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

I would recommend that everyone encrypts the emails that go on the service, as obviously we can't do it ourselves (we have to actually be able to read them to send them out!).

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

I guess you create an email, encrypt it with a 2048 bit AES key. And set it up to mail to your 'back up'.

Then you go and create 32 throw away email accounts and have each of them running their own aliveness test on a TOR proxy which is mailing you their queries.

When you go 'off line' the 32 mail their part of the key to the recipient, DMS mails them the main letter. :-)

Not a serious suggestion but it would be fun as a plot device in some cyber fiction.

kalleboo• 15 years ago

It would be cool if this service could monitor your Twitter/Facebook/etc for signs of life to cut down on the link-clicking required, and to add more resilience in the case of spam filtering.

mcanterb• 15 years ago

There is a similar service that does monitor your Twitter/Facebook to check for activity. It's http://www.afteridie.org . I haven't really looked into it, though.

I worked on a similar project called seNotable (mentioned by dgunn) that uses public information to determine if the user has passed a way. Seems like there are quite a few of these services.

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

That's a very good idea! I'll see if I can have some basic Twitter integration soon.

LokiSnake• 15 years ago

Might also be nice to have a very simple push notification enabled mobile app for active reminders in addition to passive checks via Twitter. It'll be way less actions from a user's point of view compared to email when on the go.

skimbrel• 15 years ago

That's one hell of an SLA to commit to.

amurmann• 15 years ago

I like the idea of having a service like this. However, I am worried about having one centralized service for this kind of thing. Interested parties, like certain government agencies will have a high interest in hacking it. I hope no one who really needs a dead man's switch as an insurance will use this service, if it ever get's big.

Lambent_Cactus• 15 years ago

This is the start of an entertaining thriller. Someone should be working on the movie rights.

FreebytesSector• 15 years ago

There was already a book named Daemon that uses similar concepts. I highly recommend it.

SoftwareMaven• 15 years ago

Perfect, right up to the point Google kills my account for using my nickname (yes, hyperbolic and no longer accurate, but the point holds).

icebraining2• 15 years ago

This doesn't use Google Accounts, it's a standard form. You just need to trust DMS, not anyone else.

lawlit3• 15 years ago

What if my email provider, let's call it @MySuperAwesomeEmailProvider.com just goes out of business and decided to stop the service. Then I can't answer to the emails you will "life-ping" me with. And I won't even be able to change my email address on your system because I would have lost my account password. And then the next day, I don't think I would be able to go out.

notatoad2• 15 years ago

if you are worried that your email provider will go out of service without notice, you should get a different email provider.

lawlit3• 15 years ago

I'm worried with _all_ email providers

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

You can just send us an email and prove that you own the account and we'll change your email for you, it's not that big a problem.

lawlit3• 15 years ago

Do you have a policy for how users can _prove_ that they are who they're claiming to be ? Can you handle having _too_many_ users under the terms of that policy ?

datums• 15 years ago

I hope they process bouncebacks and disable the service for the bounced user.

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

We don't, because your account might have been canceled at your death, so disabling your DMS account would be the last thing you wanted.

cek• 15 years ago

Better idea: Live your life in such a way that you have no regrets. Tell people how you feel, when you feel. Don't burn bridges.

revorad• 15 years ago

Regrets are not the only reason to have secrets.

DanielStraight• 15 years ago

I was just thinking this is a lot like a coin flipping trick I heard once. You flip a coin for a decision, notice whatever you're secretly hoping the coin lands on, put the coin back in your pocket without looking at it, and do what you secretly wanted the coin to tell you to do.

With this service, go ahead and fill out what you want the emails to say... and then just send them.

ctdonath2• 15 years ago

Non-sequitur.

To the contrary, it may ensure bridges are there when you aren't, and may tell people how you feel when you're not around to.

Example: there are a lot of people whom I care about, but who - with no ill will involved - we've drifted off in our own directions as life tends to. We have vague contact info, and lacking that have mutual friends who can pass things on if need be. Come my demise, I may want a mass-emailing to thank them, ask for casual assistance for my dependents, and generally give a warm farewell. When I went in for heart surgery, I let one of the group know, in case it didn't turn out well; going in wasn't enough to warrant interrupting everyone and writing paper letters, but if I didn't come out someone needed to spread the word ("Hey, remember Carl? he's gone now, but says 'hi, thanks for the memories'"). Not worth printing up stacks of physical letters and burdening someone with putting then-required postage etc., but makes it easy to let people know how you feel when it's too much overhead all around now (hey, that's a big reason why people hate Facebook: too many updates), but when it is important to do so is exactly when you can't.

JoeAltmaier2• 15 years ago

I'm thinking the parent comment was still right. Why not say those things now? Its not 'interrupting everyone', its keeping in contact. Its important to do that now, especially if you haven't in a while.

prpon• 15 years ago

A cousin passed away few years back with cancer. It wasn't sudden but wasn't expected either. (He was 37 and responding well to treatment). His wife was completely uninterested with regards to finances and bills.

He was quite meticulous and wrote down every single account he owned, details like account number, login, password in an excel spreadsheet. It was a lot of help for her.

I worry about security of such a system. I also worry about security of online services for using such a system. I also worry if my wife would be able to locate that file.

Are there any schemes that work for you?

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

I would encrypt it, store the passphrase somewhere (or tell it to your wife) and put (a link to) the file up on DMS. This way, you have nothing to lose.

jtheory• 15 years ago

A dead man's switch is interesting to me, because it is one way to (try to) work around the what-if's that can foil the best laid plans of the unimaginative deceased.

Any solution where the sensitive information is physically near me doesn't work well -- what if I die when my house burns down, and my computer and paper documents are destroyed? What if I carefully document everything, store the document encrypted offsite, and make sure my wife knows the password.. and we die together in a car crash?

There needs to be a solution that lives somewhere I don't, and doesn't rely on people I normally accompany on airplanes, in cars, in dark alleyways...

One "what-if" that is super-important to an email-based dead man's switch -- how are your email servers set up for getting email through? I.e, DKIM, RDNS... all of the tricks & protocols that Google uses (and if you don't, you'll end up in the Hotmail junk folder more often than not), processing of auto-replies like Earthlink's whitelist system, etc..

quanticle• 15 years ago

Well, the best thing would be to write up all that, print it out, and put it in the same safe-deposit box that holds your will. Of all the storage media we have, paper is still the best proven for long-term retrieval.

JoeAltmaier2• 15 years ago

Never, never put your will into a safe-deposit box. That cannot be opened after you die until you have an executor. Which happens after the will is found.

Just make a couple copies, leave on in your desk, in your office, in your bedside table, with your lawyer. They are not secret documents, not something you have to lock up.

bcl• 15 years ago

I would never trust my last words to a web service. Instead I have a 'So Long and Thanks for all the Fish' letter in my safe.

postfuturist• 15 years ago

I've often entertained the idea of creating a piece of software to tend to certain things after my passing, beyond just sending out a batch of emails. It could reply to emails with canned responses for certain people, even a little AI to respond to questions. Sounds pretty narcissistic now that I think about it. Who really wants to be pestered with emails from dead people?

andre• 15 years ago

check out the Daemon and Freedom books..... along those lines, just 1000x more so. http://thedaemon.com/

zethraeus• 15 years ago

I think I've seen services like this before, and either way would rather get a physical person/company with some recourse for acting incorrectly to do it.

But, take a look at the favicon. The broken lemniscate is bizarrely poignant/morbid for a 16*16 pixel square. Neat design.

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

That's the company logo, I didn't get around to changing it yet:

http://www.stochastictechnologies.com/

I hadn't noticed how well it fits until you pointed it out, I think I'll keep it.

MichaelGG• 15 years ago

A way to deal with the issue of it accidentally triggering, as well as get quicker triggers, is to provide a list of family/friends that can verify your non-existence.

JimboOmega• 15 years ago

I've been working on a similar concept for a while too. I can only hope that mine turns out better (not that this one is bad - rather, if this one is better than mine, then mine is pretty useless!)

chrisgoodrich• 15 years ago

This seems scary. The risk of the confirmation emails being interpreted as spam or not seen is just way too high.

Due to the sensitivity of the information being sent out, there is zero margin for error. Even an after death personal message is pretty hefty if it's a false positive.

I would much rather prefer a service that requires my family to get to the info from a will or lawyer to gain access to my sensitive info.

I'd be interested to hear about the business model to this.

wtn• 15 years ago

Whitelist them.

chad_oliver• 15 years ago

I've been thinking about this a bit after the shootings in Norway, and the deadly earthquake in my city a few months ago. I think that I have two requirements in order to be able to die happily: that I have said everything I need to say, and that other people can understand me (think 'speaker for the dead', so that people can understand what was important to me and what I believed in). I have many things I want to do before I die, but if these two needs are provided for, I can honestly die without regret. Everything else is just dependent on me living out my convictions.

Certainly we should regularly tell people that we love them, that they are important to us, etc, but I think being able to say a final goodbye is an entirely different thing. I hope my brother understands how much of a role model he is to me (and I will try to make sure he does know), but even so I would appreciate the chance to say so, one last time. My parents know I love them, but I think they would treasure a post-mortem letter saying exactly that.

However, I agree with everyone who pointed out that emails are a bit impersonal. I would prefer to be able to hand-write letters, and have them automatically posted via regular mail. I think that would be a pleasant surprise.

mhb• 15 years ago

How do they make money? Targeted ads? Cemetery plots? Tombstones?

StavrosK20• 15 years ago

The first version didn't, it was just for fun. The second will include a paid account with more features, such as custom sending intervals, phone integration, etc.

monkeypizza• 15 years ago

I always wondered why aggrieved FBI / CIA agents don't use this type of service to mail out their uncensored memoirs to 100 different newspapers & underground conspiracy nuts.

Obviously this site is a huge target for government organizations who have a lot of secrets - whenever a service like this springs up I bet the first order of business is for someone to install a permanent tap on it, and a way to block the emails if need be.

Dead Man's Switch

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