Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#1

Post by delano » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 11:15 PM UTC

We got a lot of feedback last month on our post about the alpha launch of onetimesecret.com ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3207489 ). We were blown away by the amount of interest so we spent more time working on it and talking to more people. We just upgraded the site to beta which includes new features and a lot of improvements.

It would be awesome to get more feedback but more importantly I wanted to mention that we've included a free plan for HNers. (You might notice that we're A/B testing another free plan -- the key difference is that this one will be free forever.)

So thank you and let me know what we can do better!

Re: Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#2

Post by delano » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 11:17 PM UTC

Clickable link: https://onetimesecret.com/

(The previous post for our alpha: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3207489)

Re: Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#3

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 11:20 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#4

Post by jfedie » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 11:42 PM UTC

Ive used these type of encrypted messages before but with little success or the glitches are many. Ive begun using One-Time secret and it works first try with no issues. Glad to see someone doing it right.

Re: Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#5

Post by boyter » Tue, Dec 13, 2011, 12:14 AM UTC

I actually used this other other day to transmit a root password for a server. Not sure how often this happens but contrary to my own belief there appears to be a market for this sort of thing.

Re: Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#6

Post by delano » Tue, Dec 13, 2011, 12:24 AM UTC

boyter wrote: post #5

I actually used this other other day to transmit a root password for a server. Not sure how often this happens but contrary to my own belief there appears to be a market for this sort of thing.

We totally thought the usecases were going to be pretty limited but as it's turned out we've been getting a lot of great feedback from outside of the tech community too.

Drew Carey of all people retweeted it:

https://twitter.com/DrewFromTV/status/142730130689761280

Re: Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#7

Post by aeeeee » Tue, Dec 13, 2011, 12:36 AM UTC

I don't see much use for this outside the send-a-password use-case. For that it seems like one of those things that might be convenient if I need to send a password/username to a buddy but for anything at all official I don't think you will get users. Most places don't want people going out to 3rd party sites for sensitive data.

Re: Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#8

Post by boyter » Tue, Dec 13, 2011, 12:48 AM UTC

delano wrote: post #6

boyter wrote: post #5

I actually used this other other day to transmit a root password for a server. Not sure how often this happens but contrary to my own belief there appears to be a market for this sort of thing.

We totally thought the usecases were going to be pretty limited but as it's turned out we've been getting a lot of great feedback from outside of the tech community too. Drew Carey of all people retweeted it: https://twitter.com/DrewFromTV/status/142730130689761280

I would hope you wouldn't know this from the service itself, but do you know what use cases people are using it for based on feedback? I suspect there may be something its being used for I had not considered and might actually use.

Re: Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#9

Post by MichaelApproved » Tue, Dec 13, 2011, 12:49 AM UTC

What do you do about database back ups? Do you not back up those tables or do you wipe out the backups after a couple of days?

Re: Thanks HN: we just launched the One-Time Secret beta based on your feedback

#10

Post by delano » Tue, Dec 13, 2011, 1:07 AM UTC

boyter wrote: post #8

delano wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We totally thought the usecases were going to be pretty limited but as it's turned out we've been getting a lot of great feedback from outside of the tech community too. Drew Carey of all people retweeted it: https://twitter.com/DrewFromTV/status/142730130689761280

I would hope you wouldn't know this from the service itself, but do you know what use cases people are using it for based on feedback? I suspect there may be something its being used for I had not considered and might actually use.

For tech people, we've had the most questions regarding our API (password resets, one-time pads, custom encryption) and also the ability to have custom installs that are separate from the multi-tenant instance (e.g. we now have a paid plan for agencies that does this).

For non-tech people, we've got a lot of feedback along the lines of whistle-blowing, "if only Anthony Weiner had known about this", etc.

Edit: and yes, just to be clear, we do not look at the secrets that we keep. We encrypt all secrets before they're stored. If you include a passphrase, we use that as part of the encryption key and we since don't store that passphrase we have no way to decrypt the secret. It's technically possible for us to decrypt passphrase-lee secrets but we'd have to go out of our way to do it.