I concur, with the following additional reasons. First, depending on what you meant by "mess up": there's a chance they're not trustworthy (would read something you don't want read), and there's also a chance they screw up (and lose what you want sent - or send it when it shouldn't be sent).
Perhaps an even bigger thing for me is that an email seems so... off-hand, informal. I think if a friend/relative/etc died and an email was automatically sent to me from them I would feel a lot less... less something, can't quite think of the word, than if I got a properly written letter. Less sentimental I guess, less appreciative of it.
Hey guys, I read the entire frontpage and somehow missed this story: I made Dead Man's Switch, and the beta is the second iteration, hosted on GAE. I certainly didn't expect it to be HNed so early.
These are all valid concerns. This isn't meant to replace wills or lawyers, it's just something to tell your friends to maybe look for you in the mountains if you don't respond in X days.
Some people also had the idea of using it to monitor infirm/elderly people, so I wrote this second version to hopefully have more flexibility to interface with phone/sms/etc.
I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have!
Have you considered setting up an api? If I used this, I'd worry that if I forget to respond to the emails or something. Letting me hook it into other events that indicate I'm alive, such as logging into my laptop, etc, would prevent this.
It'd really be a one-action api- send a post request to some url to keep me alive, with some level of authentication.
You can load any webpage on the site, and it will keep you alive. It's as simple as doing a POST on the form, but it should be trivial for me to implement a simple API, so I'll write this soon!
However, GAE can't do https on that domain yet, and I don't feel very secure passing credentials like that, so I might have to issue API keys. Still, not very hard, thanks for the suggestion!
Haha, hmm, you're right there. However, that is the standard name of any device that triggers when the user loses consciousness or is otherwise incapacitated.
Hmm, I don't have any of those (I get an email whenever someone's switch triggers, but just the username, and the emails have been deleted at that point), I suspect most are just tests, or the friends/relatives aren't too inclined to email me about it.
I do have a "success" story (used very very loosely due to the morbid nature), I'll write it up when the service is out of beta and link it here.
I actually hadn't even considered that they might read my letters without me knowing. I simply meant that a server went bonkers, or some bad code made it live and they accidentally sent my mails early.
As for the informal, bit... I certainly wouldn't let my mother be informed this way. But friends? That's how I mainly communicate with them anyhow.
Perhaps an even bigger thing for me is that an email seems so... off-hand, informal. I think if a friend/relative/etc died and an email was automatically sent to me from them I would feel a lot less... less something, can't quite think of the word, than if I got a properly written letter. Less sentimental I guess, less appreciative of it.