Dead Man's Switch

https://www.deadmansswitch.net/

by warkanlock • 2 years ago

38 50 2 years ago

You could achieve the same thing with gmail’s scheduled email. Or you could give your emails to a company based in the Caymans.

tronster• 2 years ago

I noticed that as well; surprised more aren't writing about it.

There would need to be some level of trust established with any organization handling e-mails, likely filled sensitive content. An unknown, faceless company in the Caymans doesn't instill that trust.

Ylpertnodi• 2 years ago

Using Gmail scheduled email would only work for suicide?

edward28• 2 years ago

You schedule it for X months from now, and at X days before sending you reschedule it X months later, ad infinitum.

hsjsbeebue2• 2 years ago

What is the dead mans switch guy dies?

nthdeui• 2 years ago

Presumably you'll get an email from him to tell you so

hsjsbeebue2• 2 years ago

What if I am dead?

cydodon• 2 years ago

hmm... if you trigger other actions with these emails you are halfway into the plot of "Deamon" by Daniel Suarez ;)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(novel)

moinism• 2 years ago

It's a shameless plug, but I have built and use something similar: https://backupdiary.com

tempestn3• 2 years ago

The "but" is that I will almost certainly outlive this service. I don't remember the name, but there was something similar, though a bit more built up and polished, a few years back. Seems like a good idea, so I set it up. A year or two later, it was gone. Thankfully, I'm not.

I love the idea of something like this - even better if it included some digital housekeeping, deleting what I'd rather delete, and sending what I'd like to share - but I think I'll have to build and maintain it for myself if I want it to last.

oliviabenson• 2 years ago

Probably, but this service has been around for over a decade so it has at least proven that it has some longevity — plus the creator is an HN user and this concern comes up every time the service is discussed, so maybe it’ll outlive us all because of the universe’s desire to prove a bunch of cynical nerds wrong.

xg153• 2 years ago

Maybe some HNers should arrange to make this thread a yearly event where we regularly check if the service is still alive.

627467• 2 years ago

I'm torn: the pricing is very good for a service that is meant - in spirit - to last a lifetime. but it also seems unrealisticaly cheap. a subscription seems more sustainable.

Cthulhu_• 2 years ago

I will almost certainly outlive this service.

You hope ;). You can't predict some things, so it's good practice to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

That said, the old fashioned alternative is to set up a will with a notary.

tempestn3• 2 years ago

I have a will, as should everyone, but I wouldn't call it an alternative to a service like this.

ryandrake• 2 years ago

Humanity in general, and the Internet in particular, is pretty bad at creating things that will outlive their founders/users. Ideally, you could just found some site, set it in motion, and just never touch it again, and it will humm along for all of eternity. Unfortunately, things require maintenance or they could fall over next time your VM reboots, and things require payment or the service disappears. Some infrastructure your automation relies on could change out from under you. Your host or domain registrar might make surprise changes to your service. If you're self-hosting, there are a different set of failure modes: Your ISP can take you down, your physical site could lose power, your hardware could fail.

I really don't trust anything to actually outlive me.

juitpykyk• 2 years ago

Idea: offer a separate service where you can pay to prevent one particular switch being activated.

Price: $10k

xg153• 2 years ago

You could make this into a bidding war. The dead man's switch owner makes a base payment to install the switch. An adversary can block the switch by paying double that, the owner can overrule the adversary by paying double of his bid, the adversary can override the override by quadrupling his bid, etc etc.

I'm sure there is some VC money in this.

segfaultbuserr• 2 years ago

To make it more "interesting", implement it as a smart contract on the blockchain, so an adversary can also choose to exploit software vulnerabilities for profit...

xg153• 2 years ago

It's a nice marketing stunt and/or art project - but if I was active in circles where my sudden, untimely death was something to worry about so much that I need an insurance, then the last thing I'd want to entrust my secrets to would probably be some random startup with unclear financing and ownership structure that could pivot or get acqui-hired or just close up shop tomorrow.

willi59549879• 2 years ago

People are proabably better off with notes on paper or something self hosted. But the idea is nice. there are some projects on github with the same idea: https://github.com/kescherCode/dead-mans-switch

Edd314159• 2 years ago

I have somewhere between 0 and ~60 years left to live. I don’t trust this service (or any service!) to remain active and live for even 5 of those years.

izoow2• 2 years ago

The manual checking in part seems like a lot of hassle, even if it's only once every 2 months or so. If I wanted to have something like this, I'd want it to be as set-and-forget as possible.

For example, me being alive could be determined by whether I logged into my machine over the last X days and a certain service ran. If it didn't, only then start bugging me to confirm manually.

Also, as others have already mentioned, I'd have very little trust that such service will still be around when I'll need it to trigger.

Something like scheduled gmail + a cronjob on my local machine that runs once a day and reschedules the email is something I'd imagine could work if I wanted to set up something like this for myself.

themoonisachees• 2 years ago

Kind of cool, but also consider that you will outlive your machine and probably Gmail too.

tempestn3• 2 years ago

Almost certainly your machine, but presumably you have a process to port services to your new machine. Gmail, I'm not so sure..

ClumsyPilot• 2 years ago

Something like scheduled gmail + a cronjob on my local machine

I would want a non-local machine, what if my house burns down with me? Whole point is that if I die, it fires

izoow2• 2 years ago

The local machine would be what's keeping it from firing, not what's making it fire.

justsomehnguy• 2 years ago

Quite amusing, but receiving a payment every month is a pretty good indicator if someone is still alive.

CaptainOfCoit• 2 years ago

I don't know about that, things don't get automatically cancelled just because someone dies. Most likely it'll take weeks or even months before the payments will be denied.

tjoff3• 2 years ago

What is the rule that says something in the lines of: if you don't verify your backups you don't have backups.

I feel that applies here, this doesn't need to take more than 10 seconds once a month (at least I would prefer it to be often enough that if it didn't come I'd recognize something was off - anything more than a month and I'd probably never notice if they stopped coming).

Each verification also serves the purpose of reminding you the service exists, that it is alive and at least gives you some indication and confidence that it will work when you want it to (also makes you think about it, after ten years maybe you'd want to update the content for it to still be relevant).

purplepatrick• 2 years ago

I’ve been using DMS for years and think it’s excellent. It’s not a hassle at all: once a month, I get an email and all I need to do is click on the link in it. That’s it.

Also, I use it to email only one designated person who receives an email with a password hint to an encrypted folder containing all my important stuff in life such as passwords etc.

brody_hamer• 2 years ago

Gmail actually already has this feature.

It’s called the “inactive account manager”, and you can use it to give other people access to your email account after a couple months of inactivity.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en

kilroy123• 2 years ago

Wow, I did not know about this—great call out.

sho2• 2 years ago

I had a very similar idea to this a long time ago and built a basic thing, registered a domain etc, was ready to put it live.. and then I spoke to a lawyer, who told me to think very carefully about whether I really wanted to deal with the possible legal and personal ramifications of sending potentially explosive material on or around someone's death. I decided I probably didn't want to so I shelved it.

I think it's important something like this exists but I'd also ask the author if he's really thought this through.

echoangle• 2 years ago

Would you really be responsible for this? Like, what’s the worst that could happen? People putting threats or insults into their messages? Can’t you just remove it as soon as it is reported, and be fine? Is there a legal need to proactively monitor your content?

tjoff3• 2 years ago

IANAL, but I feel a bigger risk would be that you trigger it before it should.

Maybe a bug in your emailserver or that the configuration option that you used to correctly turn off the spam-filter had a bug in it and caused some of the I'm-alive signals to be dropped.

sho2• 2 years ago

Well, my service was envisioned more as a "whistleblower" kind of scenario where someone might be in possession of information that caused them some kind of fear, whether it be for their life, job, or what have you. Or, a trusted service where it might be crypto keys or other potentially extremely valuable information. Basically, high-value information of some sort which others might be very motivated to acquire, or block release of, or the like. The service was fully encrypted, provably, and my side only held partial keys.

I think the author of this project probably has a slightly different use case in mind, but it's easy to imagine how a project that had my focus could quite easily get embroiled in lawsuits or other drama. I'd still like to do it one day, but it would need to be under circumstances of absolute isolation from myself both physically and legally. For the time being, I don't have the resources and/or time to make that happen, so shelved it was.

swader999• 2 years ago

Programmable crypto might be a better foundation to build this sort of thing on top of.

nojs• 2 years ago

A fun thought experiment is to consider what would happen if you forgot to check in and the switch fired, and emailed all your loved ones the things you wanted to tell them - would your life get better or worse?

Maybe this would function as a layer of plausible deniability for telling everyone how you felt.

tveyben• 2 years ago

Interesting concept, but can I really trust that this system is alive and working when it’s my time to leave this planet?

The date not planned, but hopefully not until after XX years and god knows how many dot-com’s…

Maybe we also need a dead-man’s-switch for this dead-man’s-switch service

ciccionamente• 2 years ago

Shameless plug: https://weexpire.org

coldblues• 2 years ago

Bitwarden's Emergency Access (https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/) would be a much better way to go about it.

mud_dauber• 2 years ago

Sounds like an ideal tool for the day that you get laid off. Especially if you’ve got an ax to grind.

ThomasMidgley• 2 years ago

What if this service has a bug and sends all messages even if you are going well?

morningsam• 2 years ago

I don't know how it works in other countries, but at least in Germany, the judiciary essentially provides this service: When you have your will notarized, they will offer to send a copy to the district court who will keep it safe until you die, at which point they will retrieve it to decide what happens to your inheritance. As far as I know, you can also put non-inheritance related things in there, including asking people to forward messages (in sealed envelopes, if you wish) on your behalf.

In countries with this kind of system, the only use case I can imagine for an additional commercial e-mail based service is if you don't trust your next of kin at all, so you don't want to leave the message forwarding up to them, or have messages whose recipients you want to keep secret from them.

_boffin_• 2 years ago

Made by: https://www.stochastic.io

Which has an address of: 5th Floor, Genesis Building, Genesis Close George Town, Grand Cayman Cayman Islands, KY1-1106

Which also shares an address with: https://mcgrathtonner.com

Which also show up in the Paradise Papers: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/81077405

Dead Man's Switch

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