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Dead Man's Switch

beta.deadmansswitch.net

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Re: Dead Man's Switch

#21

Post by pavel_lishin »

rheide wrote: post #12

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 i…

> 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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#22

Post by s2r2 »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #19
s2r2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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.

I think your right. One (k,n)=(2,3) scheme for each group to unlock the (2,2)-scheme for the secret.

And the wife just needs to remember one key this way...

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#23

Post by amurmann »

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#25

Post by wccrawford »

riffraff wrote: post #14
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.

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#27

Post by wccrawford »

corin_ wrote: post #10
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 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…

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#28

Post by dgunn »

wccrawford wrote: post #25
riffraff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

We're doing a similar service so we've looked into it a bit. We found that as long as it isn't contested, nearly anything counts as a will. If your will is likely to stir things up among the beneficiaries though, you should definitely get a lawyer.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#29

Post by mcanterb »

kalleboo wrote: post #15

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.

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.

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