Dead Man Switch

ransomwarelettuce@lemmy.world to Programming@programming.dev – 101 points –

This week I read a post about the death of the Boeing whistleblower, and how Boeing might have suicided him.

I don't care about if the rumors are true or not, however someone mentioned in the comments that in such situations one should always have a Dead Man Switch.

For those who don't know a Dead Man Switch is basically an action TBD in case you die, like leaking documents, send messages/emails, kill a server etc . . .

The concept tickled me a bit, and I decided I want to build a similar system for myself. No, I am not in danger but I would like to send last goodbyes to friends and family. I think it would be cool concept.

How would you go and build such service?

I thinking of using a VPS to do the actions because it would be running for a while before my debit card gets cancelled.

The thing that is bugging me out is the trigger, I will not put that responsibility onto someone that's cheating, so it would have to be something which can reliably tell I am dead and has to run regularly.

Where is what I come up with :

  • Ask a country association through email if am I am dead.

  • Check if I haven't logged out on my password manager in a week. If it's even possible.

TLDR; Give me ideas on how to build a DEAD MAN SWITCH and what triggers should I use.

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Some form of compute with a recurring job that checks for a DNS address or domain.

Choose a domain that needs to be regularly paid for as a target.

Reason I would choose something you pay for as the trigger is because not paying a bill after your death is one thing that will be actioned on no matter what.

except your family can continue to pay for your hosting and domains

That's if they know about it and have access to any of the accounts.

For example you can setup a domain.com account that's almost completely anonymous.