I think it would be helpful to work kind of the opposite: I give the login info to a few people I trust, but if theya attempt to login then I'd be alerted and have a week/month to cancel it. Then if I'm dead they're able to get the docs, but if I'm not then I know I maybe shouldn't trust the person who tried to log in.
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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It's called a dead man's switch and there's not really anything complicated about it.
The thing is, it's so so simple I doubt anyone has made a full on app to do it.
Like, the people who do that stuff aren't the type to require an app to do everything for them.
In a world of left-pad, I'm sure someone has made an app for it
My immediate thought is a cron job that tests the user account's last login time and fires a script if it is exceeded.
I'm almost positive outlook can be set up to do it on its own, I was just too lazy to Google how to set it up
just schedule an email to send at a later date/time, then if you don't login to cancel it, off it goes.
Feels like it makes sense to self host such an app instead of going through some corporation
Depends on your priorities.
But if your priority is to get the info out there, then you want both, so that it can't be stopped just by your ISP cutting your service or losing power, nor by the service you're using shutting down or deleting your message
You don't really need a self hosted app, you can write a sceipt to do the following:
- Check if file X exists.
- If file X does exist, delete it
- If file X doesn't exist, delete directory Y
Then create a new scheduled task to run the script every week.
The result is that you have a deadman switch with a weeks delay
Unless you recreate file X every week, directory Y will be deleted.
This is a very simplistic example, but it would be decently difficult to figure out.
I've always thought about a 'button' on your phone that you could press and wipe an entire encrypted drive. Conversely you could have to log in at an appointed time/interval or the same scenario goes into play.