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Show HN: Deadman.io - a digital dead man's switch

deadman.io

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Re: Show HN: Deadman.io - a digital dead man's switch

#51
post #35

Yes, I'd gladly share my super-secret - so secret I only want it revealed when I die - stuff with some random website. No bueno. I'm sorry, but this is basically one of those services you can't really run on a hosted environment. I think the ultimate solution is a dead man's switch that is tied to something physical, aka a password in a bank vault that unencrypts a file somewhere. Yes, you have to trust the bank, but…

Perhaps a better method for less trustworthy heirs is to give them half of a worded password. Say the password is "pond elephant evergreen tennis skyscraper electric". You give them "pond elephant evergreen" now (in searchable e-mail), and let the dead man's switch give them "tennis skyscraper electric". Alternatively, let the dead man's switch alert heirs to swap their half of the password, so that all heirs now hav…

That's one of one of the main use cases I had in mind when I wrote this: https://github.com/ryancdotorg/threshcrypt - you encrypt a file using N passwords and require that at least M passwords be presented in order to decrypt. At the moment it's not suitable for non-technical users, though you could make a bootable thumb drive that autoruns it and saves the decrypted file. I was also able to embed it in an initramfs on Debian for use with full disk encryption.

Re: Show HN: Deadman.io - a digital dead man's switch

#52
You might find the below article from the Economist of interest/motivation:

Deathless data

What happens to our digital property after we die?

http://www.economist.com/node/21553011

"..Service providers have different rules—and few state them clearly in their terms and conditions. Many give users a personal right to use an account, but nobody else, even after death. Facebook allows relatives to close an account or turn it into a memorial page. Gmail (run by Google) will provide copies of e-mails to an executor. Music downloaded via iTunes is held under a licence which can be revoked on death. Apple declined to comment on the record on this or other policies. All e-mail and data on its iCloud service are deleted on the death of the owner.."

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