The Dead Man's Switch

[knoppixusr 0]

In life we all have but one guarantee, which is that one day all of us will die at some stage. In the past you could make a will and leave letters to loved ones in your will to be sent after your impeding doom. You might ask why do you need to do this, I'm sure some of you can come up with some more reasons as to why. So here are two that i know of. You might have a secret to tell a loved one that you only wanted them to know after you pass away. Or you may want to tell your children something when they are older but have no guarantee that you will still be around when they are old enough to tell them. Okay so today there is a service called the Dead man's Switch, basically it will store emails you write that is addressed to the people you want the email to go to. But it doesn't send the emails yet. Then you will receive a email from the dead man's switch every month or two and you have to follow a link to make sure you are still alive and well. If you fail to follow the link after a certain amount of tries over a period of time. Then only will your pre-written emails be sent to their recipients. The service is highly configurable to be less annoying to you. And it provide free of charge.

 

this service may be found on https://www.deadmansswitch.net/

 

There is also a similar service at http://www.mailfreezr.com/ . The difference is that you specify the amount of years you'd like your email message to be frozen for. This one can be used while you are still alive and is quite useful to send yourself messages from the past. For instance you could ask yourself in a years time if you managed to kick a bad habit yet? like smoking or programming in dot net Or you could send a romantic message from the past to a partner/spouse.

[deadmad7 4]

I've thought about this from time to time, when I was either talking to the insurance guy or after eating a bad pizza (and knew I was going to die within 24 hours).You get to thinking about who would treat your baseball card collection with the respect it deserves and things like this as most of the people I know wouldn't have a clue how do log in to any of it and what to do with it even if they did. So the who to pass if off to is as important as the what to do with it after they have it. It's best to leave things as it is.

[Baniboy 3]

People's email addresses change. To me this doesn't seem very useful. It's more reliable to have a lawyer or something to do this. If you want this letter to say that you love your close ones, well that's really pathetic! You should've told it to them when you were alive, if you didn't, you don't deserve to tell them that after you're dead. You don't mess with people's minds.But I can think of one way. You could do some really cool pranks with this But no, I'm not that heartless.

[knoppixusr 0]

People's email addresses change. To me this doesn't seem very useful. It's more reliable to have a lawyer or something to do this. If you want this letter to say that you love your close ones, well that's really pathetic! You should've told it to them when you were alive, if you didn't, you don't deserve to tell them that after you're dead. You don't mess with people's minds.
But I can think of one way. You could do some really cool pranks with this But no, I'm not that heartless.

Muwhaha, I am quite curious to hear what cool pranks you are pondering.... Please, do continue.

[anwiii 17]

i don't think that was a very cool thing to say. yes....people make mistakes. EVERYONE does....

there is an old saying though...."better late than never". in this case it would be true. he didn't have the thoughts when he was dead. he had them when he was alive. alot of people don't have any closure after someone close dies. this could be a chance to have some closure.

your one sided thinking like it was all about the dead guy with a hidden message means nothing to the ones that may feel contentment and closure....

as far as services like this goes.....they would never be able to gaurantee delivery. also.....i am sure these companies are at high risk of going out of business as well. oooohhhhohhhhhh take the money and run......

You should've told it to them when you were alive, if you didn't, you don't deserve to tell them that after you're dead. You don't mess with people's minds.

[iGuest 3]

ifidie.orgThe Dead Man's Switch

theree's a  similar (and imho better) service at http://www.ifidie.org/ - the mechanism for figuring out if you're dead is a little different, it relies on your friends instead of monthly emails.  both seem cool (esp cuz both are free!)

-reply by Jenny d

[Atomic0 0]

I remember that there is a subscription site that stores all your passwords on their secure servers, where the passwords can be retrieved by the persons' relatives when the person dies. I suppose it is designed to save the hassle of having to provide the death certificate to each site where the relatives want to retrieve the contents of the deceased account, instead they can just provide the certificate to the password storage vault operator and retrieve the passwords immediately. Of course, there are significant security risks, as any hacker who gains unauthorised access to the password vaults would be able to find and use the stored password.

[Zagubadu? 0]

Wow this was a good idea. I'd never do it though its kind of freaky. Maybe when I get older ( A lot older ) Thanks for the link. I think it would be funny if someone accidentally forgot one of them. And well you can see where it would go from there.

[evilsmiley25 0]

It would be better to go to a lawyer for this kind of stuff. Placing your trust in the company, to have the emails sent to the people you wrote them for, is very risky.I wouldn't bother with a novelty website like this one. It would be better to have a lawyer do this.Also, people are changing emails every while. what happens if someone changes their email, or stops using it, so they don't see your message? If it is really important, that they MUST know, then tell them yourself. Even if it is over the phone, it is better then trusting an email to make it to the recipient.But, that's only my two cents. My opinion probably does not matter to anyone, but it is how I view this.

[evilsmiley25 0]

There is also a similar service at http://www.mailfreezr.com/ . The difference is that you specify the amount of years you'd like your email message to be frozen for. This one can be used while you are still alive and is quite useful to send yourself messages from the past. For instance you could ask yourself in a years time if you managed to kick a bad habit yet? like smoking or programming in dot net Or you could send a romantic message from the past to a partner/spouse.

Oh, I somehow missed that part. I think that would be a pretty awesome idea. Setting goals, sending email to send at a certain time, then in the future, when you receive it, you can see if you followed your goals you set.

[salamangkero 0]

It is quite an interesting idea. While I do not dispute that matters of grave importance (such as significant secrets, messages of love, money and, well, estate) cannot simply be entrusted to something as simple as a web service, I must admit that there are also matters of personal importance which one cannot simply entrust to a lawyer for one of the following reasons:

 

a) one is a student, unemployed or, basically, does not have the money to hire a lawyer,

the item(s) in question are not significant enough to qualify for an "estate" such as journals, novel drafts, baseball cards, lego sets, etc

 

In any case, what I do think is that this should be useful to younger people. Many times, I have wondered on my own mortality and I am pretty sure that the thought of death comes to all sane-minded people after, if not before, the age of twenty. While I do not have much to pass on to others should I pass away, I do have things that are of certain importance to me. Should I leave this world, I would be most anxious to see that they should not fall "in the wrong hands" so to speak. However, I must admit, I have not, at the moment, the money for a lawyer nor the trust for my friends (there are rather embarrassing secrets, again, of personal importance, I am loathe to share to anyone so long as I am alive) Though, of course, I'd trust these web services even less than my friends, only, I am under the assumption that none of the people behind these web services know me personally and, therefore, would have absolutely nothing to gain from selling out on me

 

Mailfreezr, on the other hand, would be as useful to me as a personal diary kept under lock and key... or a time capsule, without all that digging and cement pouring and digging out again... which is to say, I don't find it to be of much personal use. After all, I am not the type of person to write letters to my future self, though I also understand that other people do.

 

This grim, morbid business of delivering messages after death certainly brought to mind one such arrangement with a (offline) florist. This is a mushy tearjerker, though, so... you have been warned

[bucksdude7 0]

I can think of a view things that i would like to say to loved ones after I'm gone.Thanks for informing me of this service, I will be sure to make use of it!

[demonboy1990 0]

i think the service is not reliable because what if you change email addresses or stop using it then in a certain time the email arrives for your loved ones and you are still alive it could have a lot of problems if the secret is very big like you are sleeping with someone else etc, or if it is important like leaving money to children that none of your loved ones knew about like say they got adopted out of the family and only you keep in contact with them, and there is the possiblity that the service could close and you not knowing and the message not arriving when you die, i think i would use a pen and paper and put it in a envelope its more personal or do as someone else said get a lawyer to arrange things for me its more safe and it would be trouble free unlike the Dead Man's Switch which just sounds morebid and less personal.