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Dead Man's Switch

beta.deadmansswitch.net

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Re: Dead Man's Switch

#11

Post by dgunn »

rufibarbatus wrote: post #9
jsherer wrote: post #4

Sounds 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.)

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#12

Post by rheide »

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#13

Post by leif »

wccrawford wrote: post #2

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.

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

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#14

Post by riffraff »

wccrawford wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#15

Post by kalleboo »

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#16

Post by cjdavis »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #8
s2r2 wrote: post #3

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, 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…

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)'

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#17

Post by s2r2 »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #8
s2r2 wrote: post #3

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, 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…

> 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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#18

Post by s2r2 »

cjdavis wrote: post #16
Sniffnoy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 yo…

'my wife AND (3 of 50)'

You could take k=54 and give your wife 51 keys.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#19

Post by Sniffnoy »

s2r2 wrote: post #18
cjdavis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

'my wife AND (3 of 50)' You could take k=54 and give your wife 51 keys.

Works for this simple case, but I think iterating the procedure is more general. For instance, suppose there are 6 people -- A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, and you want it to be recoverable given any 2 of the A group and any 2 of the B group; I'm pretty sure that can't be handled with a solution like the above.
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