Dead Man's Switch
beta.deadmansswitch.net
Dead Man's Switch
1–10 of 101 posts
Re: Dead Man's Switch
#2Interesting, 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.
Re: Dead Man's Switch
#3Something 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.
Re: Dead Man's Switch
#4Sounds like an interesting idea. But, like others, I am skeptical relying on a "beta labeled" web service to handle this for me.
Re: Dead Man's Switch
#5I 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.
Re: Dead Man's Switch
#6There 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.
Re: Dead Man's Switch
#7We'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.
Re: Dead Man's Switch
#8Something 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, t…
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.
Re: Dead Man's Switch
#9Sounds like an interesting idea. But, like others, I am skeptical relying on a "beta labeled" web service to handle this for me.
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.)
Re: Dead Man's Switch
#10Interesting, 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.
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.