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Dead Man's Switch

beta.deadmansswitch.net

51–60 of 101 posts

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#51
post #50

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 syst…

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#52
post #33

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.

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#53
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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#54
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 u…

Sorry for the morbid curiousity, but can you share any stories of "successes"?

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#55
post #50

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 syst…

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.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#56
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?

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#57
post #31

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.

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

I'm worried with _all_ email providers

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#58
post #31

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.

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.

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 ?

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#59
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

Sorry for the morbid curiousity, but can you share any stories of "successes"?

Hmm, I don't have any of those (I get an email whenever someone's switch triggers, but just the username, and the emails have been deleted at that point), I suspect most are just tests, or the friends/relatives aren't too inclined to email me about it.

I do have a "success" story (used very very loosely due to the morbid nature), I'll write it up when the service is out of beta and link it here.

Re: Dead Man's Switch

#60
post #32

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

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.
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