What Does Your Dead Man's Switch Do?

LqdEngineer asks: "How many of you use or have used a Dead Man's Switch designed to perform some action if you don't check in for a certain amount of time? Recently, I decided to put one together using MySQL and some cron jobs, but I wanted to see what others have their switches set up to do in the event you fail to check in. E-mails to loved ones? Send encryption keys to friends/family? Hate mail to your boss? Has anyone ever been on the receiving end of the results of such a system?"

Comments

Wives and Other DMSs

[P(0)(!P(k) P(k 1))]

From TFS:

I decided to put [a dead man's switch] together using MySQL and some cron jobs . . . .

I'll counter with my own ask-ask-slashdot: why would you use MySQL? It's only one more component to fail after you've expired.

My advice: lose the extraneous components; and get a wife, too: they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism.

Re:Wives and Other DMSs

[Profane MuthaFucka]

they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism
they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism
they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism

hmmm. Now I think I understand what's in the nightstand drawer.

Re:Wives and Other DMSs

[kjart]

and get a wife, too: they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism

You've clearly never been married or else you'd realize that the need for a dead man's switch rises dramatically in the years following ;)

Re:Wives and Other DMSs

[P(0)(!P(k) P(k 1))]

[Y]ou'd realize that the need for a dead man's switch rises dramatically . . . .

Ah, but that's the double sens of “dead man's mechanism:” herald and agent of your unmaking.

(At the very least, she unmade me a bachelor.)

There's only one thing it should do

[TodMinuit]

Blow up the building.

Re:There's only one thing it should do

[zyl0x]

Why, did someone take your stapler?

Re:There's only one thing it should do

[BecomingLumberg]

No. Were that the case, he would burn down the building. Duh.

My gas pedal...

[ForestGrump]

When I take my foot off, it slows the car to a halt. Just kidding, cruise control gets around the situation.

Grump

Re:My gas pedal...

[ajs318]

s/bus/milk float/
s/55/4

Re:My gas pedal...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ted, you forgot your brick!"

Re:My gas pedal...

[ultramk]

"I would like to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror, like his passengers."

Halo.

[headkase]

Duh. Activate the rings and release the black hole from it's omni-magnetic retainer so it can eat Earth. No traces left.

Re:Halo.

[edward2020]

Whoa! Dude, I think you need a comma before your third quotation mark. Furthermore, depending on the style you're using (I like to use APA for Slashdot) the fourth quotation needs to include the period. :)

creates more deadmens switches

[green pizza]

My deadman's switch is programmed to create a series of new deadmen's switches, each more complex than the last.

First things first

[antifoidulus]

delete all the porn!

Re:First things first

[Garridan]

Why? If it's illegal, you won't get caught once you're dead. Unless, of course, you believe in heaven & hell -- and from what I hear, God already knows, so hiding it won't do you any good.

Re:First things first

[lukas84]

When you're gone, you're gone. The world is meaningless, because you no longer exist.

Re:First things first

[ElaborateCalculator]

Mod parent up:
+1 Solipsist

Re:First things first

[rammer]

What a sadly egoist world view you have.

World may be meaningless to you. You are dead. You, in effect, do not exist anymore. But the world does not stop existing simply because you expire.
You are not the center of the universe. You are merely an almost infinitesimal part of the big, grand, large, larger than life universe.

Children are naturally egoist. You are 22. What is your excuse? :)

Re:First things first

[Garridan]

Logically, why *should* you care what people people think of you when you're dead? I do my best to do the right thing, so that I might get the recognition that I deserve while I'm alive. If I die, and people say, "whoah, what a great guy!" or "man that dude was an asshole!", it doesn't make a difference to me.

Now, something like a will can have a significant impact on the people you love... so I definately see the benefit to helping them out, even if they don't know about it while you're alive. But cleaning up some potentially embarassing portion of your life after you die? Not seeing it.

Re:First things first

[sumdumass]

Logicly thinking, it is more deeper then that. But lets not forget the reasons for a deadmans switch could be for more then death. Imagine your arested because of a fling that started in an internet chat room and turned out to be some cop posing as a 13 year old girl except that that was never discused in the chatroom and the cop is just saying that because they want the glory of catching a child preditor.

But imagine that you somehow discover something that will save mankind from it's inevitable demise. Lets suppose this breakthru in whatever is so wild it has to work and it will end all war, famine, discrimination, global warming, whatever. Now lets say some drunk driver hits you and you die right after releasing this information to the public. Then they go back to find out more information and find volumes of porn, plots to over throw the government, conspiracy therories about 9/11 being an inside job and so on. They now decide your a nutcase and never consider your discovery.

Now lets make things even worse by adding that you don't know it will save mankind and only the person taking over your job, settling your estate, looking after your kids, whatever, discovers it and see the relevence but after weeding thru the rest of the BS determins it to be some nutjob stuff that would never be feasable.

There are many examples of how we (or the person doing it) had no clue about how important thier life was to some cause until years after their death. Would you want to be the person that could have made a difference in whatever you were pasionate about in life but discounted because of what was left for people to see?

Re:First things first

[lukas84]

You are not the center of the universe. You are merely an almost infinitesimal part of the big, grand, large, larger than life universe.

Correct. Thus, my death will have little consequence to the world as a whole.

Whatever these little consequences are, they can't concern me anymore, since i'm already dead.

Even the (hypothetical) people i love don't have any consequence to me anymore, since i'm dead. Death is The End.

This thinking can, of course, lead to amoral decisions, and that's why we have invented religion :)

Re:First things first

[rammer]

This thinking can, of course, lead to amoral decisions, and that's why we have invented religion :) I would say it will lead to amoral decisions. Because the core beliefs you have guide your decisions even if you are not aware of them or the fact that they influence your decisions.

I don't subscribe to any religious beliefs. I believe that when I die I decompose slowly due to food preservatives in my body but decompose none the less. But still I care about what kind of a world I leave for my children.

I care enough for the people around me that I try to do the right thing. So that when I die the world will be a better place for the almost infinitesimal part that I have influence over. We would still probably be hunter/gatherers if we were all egoists.

It's not about consequences to me I'm worried about after I die. I'm worried about the consequences to others. As a thanks to previous generations I pay it forward.

Have some children. They will really shift your world view. And everything else in the process.

Re:First things first

[rawtatoor]

Then they go back to find out more information and find volumes of porn,

If they aren't down my life's passion of snuff films, poop sex and tentacle porn then let em starve.

Re:First things first

[qwijibo]

It's much more likely that someone will discover a way to wipe out humanity than save it. In that case, do you really want someone to continue the work?

Anyway, with such an elaborate conspiracy theory, I'm disappointed that you haven't considered that the person was deliberately whacked. Anyone who finds an end to war, famine, etc would put millions of people out of work. Of course, there are the evil overlords who would like to see the guy whacked to maintain the status quo, but there are many more people who would do it because they don't want to see their entire town go through the loss of a major industry, like happened with Detroit. There's nothing more dangerous than people who have nothing to lose.

If the person who settles your estate doesn't recognize the value of your work and you haven't bothered to share it with those who do, then you're planning for the information to be lost at some point. A plan has to have more than one good idea - it has to have momentum to get going, and someone who keeps it all to themselves lacks that.

Re:First things first

[way2trivial]

all true wealth is biological.

Re:First things first

[LordEd]

The trick to the whole heaven & hell thing is acquiring people's souls. Go to a bar and you could probably convince somebody to see you one for a beer. I always state that my terms for a small loan of whatever is their eternal soul as collateral.

Basically, if it turns out religion is right, you now have some negotiable material to barter with should you wind up going the wrong direction. If religion turns out to be wrong and you just fade to dust, then you aren't in a position to worry about it anymore either.

Re:First things first

[Monkelectric]

It is so rare that one solipsists meets another.

Re:First things first

[DorkusMasterus]

Mod Parent Up! (Honestly, it's even RARER to see someone use solipsism correctly, especially in a joke situation!)

Re:First things first

[MarkGriz]

"Having kids is a waste of money anyway."

Can't get laid, eh?

Cheer up, someday your princess will come.

Re:First things first

[Mr. Slippery]

Whatever these little consequences are, they can't concern me anymore, since i'm already dead...This thinking can, of course, lead to amoral decisions, and that's why we have invented religion :)

The fact that consequences of your death can't concern you when you're dead, in no way means that reasonably foreseeable post-mortem consequences should not concern you now.

That's why even people who don't believe in any sort of "afterlife" still buy life insurance to take care of their kids.

You don't need any sort of supernatural belief to end up with behavior that most people would call "moral", just some compassion and a reasonable ability to foresee the consequences of your actions.

Which takes me off on a bit of a tangent...

Foreseeing the effects of our actions is of obvious use; if you can't do that to at least some degree, you'll quickly end up dead or institutionalized.

But compassion? What's in it for me, you wonder.

Cultivating compassion expands the self. We're pretty darn sure that the human body known as "Lukas Beeler" is eventually going to stop functioning and in some way dissolve (rot in the ground, be burned up, eaten by squirrels, whatever). If you completely identify "yourself" as "Lukas Beeler", well, then, that's it for you. Maybe you can tickle the pleasure centers of that lump of meat a little bit before it dissolves, but that seems an unsatisfactory goal.

But is identifying "yourself" as "Lukas Beeler" the only option? Throughout history, some people - people who seem to derive a great deal more contentment from life than the average Joe - have suggested that transpersonalization provides a more satisfactory experience. This means identifying "yourself" as more than "Lukas Beeler".

By "more than", I do not mean anything supernatural, I am not speaking of a "soul" or anything metaphysical like that. But what if, for example, you were to invest a portion of your own concept of identity into your family? Unless all your relatives are childless, your family will outlast your body, so that "you" might have a larger and longer existence than the body of "Lukas Beeler".

What if you were to invest your identity into your community, your city or your nation? That's an even larger and longer existence. Perhaps we have here a sensible argument for patriotism. But why stop there, when by identifying "yourself" with the whole human race, "you" get even bigger and longer-lived?

Now, hold on there, you ask. How in world am I supposed to accomplish this "investment of identity" that you're going on about? Well, it means to think of yourself as these other people. It's an exercise of imagination, to see things through their eyes, to feel what they feel. With that exercise, eventually it can be seen that the ordinary idea of "self" is just a mental construct, just an idea, not an immutable reality.

In other words, compassion is the tool and the method to get You out of you, the "big You" of consciousness out of the "small you" of flesh.

Indeed, if you get good at it, you may find that you can see "yourself" not just in other humans, but in other animals; in the trees; in the whole biosphere. Expanding "yourself" until not much identity is left connected with the body known as "Lukas Beeler".

And maybe you can keep going. Eventually you might find yourself worrying about the heat death of the observable Universe, billions of years in the future, as your end, instead of the dissolution of "Lukas Beeler" in a few decades. That's a pretty massive trade-up. And if you get that far, it's comforting to consider that cosmology seems more and more to be considering some sort of "multi-verse" scheme in which our observable Universe is only a part; there's still more to become.

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the re

Re:First things first

[LearnToSpell]

Only if you've got 'em working in the salt mines.

What happens when you forget?

[monkeypoo]

What happens when five years from now, after the thrill of having something like this setup, you forget to check back in? Now you've got passwords and emails going around saying you've passed on? I'm sure grandma will love that email. Why not just use a system that isn't triggered until your death certificate becomes available. Set it and forget it.

Re:What happens when you forget?

[Bazman]

"Why not just use a system that isn't triggered until your death certificate becomes available."

Such as? Maybe you can leave a sealed note with whoever has your will, saying 'in the event of my death please visit this web page', then give a URL, username, and password, the visiting of which causes a server-side script to run and delete all your pr0n, hate-mail your boss, put your low-numbered slashdot account up on ebay for the benefit of your next of kin, and so on.

Of course you'd have to make sure that URL was secured....

Re:What happens when you forget?

[daeg]

Agreed. There is a much better dead man's switch available, and it's called a living will and a lawyer who has the legal authority to open your safe deposit box in the bank once you pass on. It even has generations of legal precedent to help defend against greedy family members.

You can even set it up with your lawyer to have him mail things out once you're dead -- including your encryption keys, letters to family, etc.

And yes, I have been the recipient of such a letter. Many such letters, in fact. My great grandparents both wrote letters to the family describing our family history going back to roughly 1550-1600. Instead of sending them to us and us inevitably losing them, they wrote them to their estate lawyer, who held them until they both passed on. They are great reading and have been far more valuable tracing family history than the Internet or any books or libraries have gotten us.

Re:What happens when you forget?

[xtracto]

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

I dont like to study History. In fact, in primary, secondary and high school I was *really* bad at History (I can not just learn things by the book, I need to find some kind of reasoning).

Having said that, I am completely aware of the value of history, which , if known by the current people(for example) would prevent lots of deaths and war.

Now, what does your dead grandpa has to do with history?, well, history is not only what history books tell you. The history you read written on those books is what the WINNER of those events want you to believe.

As a simple example, take the Mexican revolution (I am aware, as I am Mexican). Every Setpember, 16 Mexicans have a great party celebrating the revolution of Mexico but the fact is, that the revolution was not complete. And that, is one of the reasons why Mexicans are always in the middle of nothing, where nothing happens. It is a bit more complex than that but if you like, you could read this book review to know more about that.

Re:What happens when you forget?

[Ceriel Nosforit]

So you won't sell your account until you're dead, huh...

Excuse me, I need to make a few phone calls.

You've got a nice account, by the way. Very nice...

Re:What happens when you forget?

[arivanov]

I strongly suspect that the answer is about a slightly different form of dead man switch - the "fired man switch.

There is only one possible recommendation to be said here: "Do not".

First, your knowledge and capability are the best "dead" man switch you can have. If you need more than that you have failed in your professional objectives. Get real, sit down and get better at what you do.

Second, what goes around, comes around. You never know whom are you going to meet in your next job. Even if you meant it to be a real "dead man switch", you never know whom are your descendants, students or friends going to meet in their next job.

Third, if you leave a reasonable amount of time between the last check and firing the targets are likely to change, which will make the payload of the dead man switch misfire. You would either overdo it or fail to do it fully and leave traces. Either case is not in your favour. What may have been a harmless prank can become a crime which will be traced to you.

So the recommendations are do not, do not and do not. Your will deposited with your bank or insurance company is a good enough dead man switch and you will be surely dead when it gets invoked.

Re:What happens when you forget?

[SpiritusGladius1517]

The history you read written on those books is what the WINNER of those events want you to believe.

Evidently you don't like to study history. If you did, you might have been familiar with a man named Thucydides. He was an Athenian general during the Peloponnesian War, who wrote the definitive account of that conflict. What's unique about his work, History of the Peloponnesian War , is that though it was written by an Athenian general, it was in fact the Spartans who were victorious. This means that the scholarly historical account we have of that war, which is one of the earliest works in the study of history, was written by the loser.

The tripe about history always being written by the victors has been the rally cry of historical revisionists but has little truth to it. History has been and continues to be a much more scholarly endeavor than people think.

Re:What happens when you forget?

[raluxs]

Of course you don't like to study history.
You should know that September 16th is DIA DE LA INDEPENDENCIA, Revolution day is November 20th.

'Pa verguenzas ajenas no gana uno, chin.....

Re:What happens when you forget?

[green1]

that was actually my first thought as well... of course it didn't take long to come up with the solution, set up the same system to email YOU before it emails anyone else, if you've simply forgotten this will remind you and let you go check-in, and if you're dead it won't get a reply and will then go on doing it's business...

I'm still not entirely sure I would set up such a system rather than simply writing a proper will and leaving the information with a trusted individual, however it is certainly not an insurmountable problem, and there could be benefits to such a system, if nothing else, some of the paperwork that people would need to settle my estate is on my computer, and I'd rather they don't spend a bunch of time cursing me for not having easy access to it while trying to both deal with the legal obligations and grieve at the same time...

Too Effective?

[pyr3]

I've always thought that a Dead Man's Switch held too many problems. Unless you have people that are 'out to get you' and your switch is your leverage, then it's not much use.

What happens if you get into a severe accident and end up in the hospital without the ability to 'check in' with it? What happens if you are stranded at an airport with a snowstorm? What if you are stranded at a ski lodge in the mountains in the middle of a snow storm? etc...

If you were ever unable to check in with the switch, then you would probably regret hate mail to your boss or other nasties that you had planned to send to people you hate. It would also be an unwelcome surprise for friends and family to get 'letters from the dead' just to find out that you really aren't dead. It would definitely be a detriment to you if you had it setup to donate all of the money in your bank accounts to charities....

The Dead Man's Switch has too many if's in it. It makes more sense to just put together a will and make sure you entrust someone you deeply trust to execute it.

Re:Too Effective?

[Technician]

What happens if you get into a severe accident and end up in the hospital without the ability to 'check in' with it? What happens if you are stranded at an airport with a snowstorm? What if you are stranded at a ski lodge in the mountains in the middle of a snow storm? etc...

Mine simply locks the encrypted filesystem if the power is interupted. A raid on my premisis while I'm gone locks things up tight. Forcing the door drops power. When I'm back, I can enter the encryption key and restore normal operation.

Re:Too Effective?

[munpfazy]

Not to mention: What happens if there's a software or hardware goof? Even leaving aside malicious attacks and the possibility of bugs in your code, who'd want to trust life-changing information to the system clock on a single machine?

You could imagine hardening a system against some of the more obvious dangers. Using two severs in different countries which confer with each other before sending anything and which both contain part of the encryption key for your data would go a long way toward catching the obvious technical dangers. If you can keep them from knowing each other's address until they both trigger, all the better (eg, by having them both call out to a third server that has no record of their locations until contacted.)

But, there's still no way to distinguish between "I'm dead," "I'm in jail," and "I'm in a coma from which I'm expected to recover." Which could be rather an important distinction.

Re:Too Effective?

[caluml]

Forcing the door drops power.

What the hell are you protecting there?

Re:Too Effective?

[zebs]

Nice.

No use in the UK though. If you don't hand over your encryption keys you can go to jail.

Good thing too. I am now safe from Terrorism

Re:Too Effective?

[ajs318]

Well ..... considering that whatever is encrypted behind those keys might conceivably be enough to send you to jail anyway (and possibly for a longer term), it might be worth swallowing the lighter sentence for not handing over your keys.

Ironically...

[Frogbert]

It's hooked up to my personal suicide machine.

Re:Ironically...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Yes, but did you test it?

Re:Ironically...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but did you test it?

Oh great...he hasn't responded. You, sir, are being charged with murder!

Why not have some fun?

[monkeypoo]

Why not make a system that, after you've passed away, pretends to be you from beyond the grave?

Maybe it checks your email contacts (most people will know you've passed on of course) and sends out randomly generated messages about how great heaven is?

"You'll never believe it! The Mormons were right!!"

Re:Why not have some fun?

[Workaphobia]

Well, if the system can pass a rigorous Turing Test and functionally replace you in all your roles, that may mean that you never even died. Either that or your life was so predictable and monotonous that a machine could live it for you.

Re:Why not have some fun?

[AJWM]

You're talking about the Heechee Saga, of which "Gateway" was the first book. They're by Frederik Pohl, not Poul Anderson.

(You got it half right, phonetically at least ;-)

Good stories.

We need a new checkbox when posting to /.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

[_] No Karma Bonus [_] Post Anonymously [_] Post Humously

Re:We need a new checkbox when posting to /.

[nacturation]

Dammit, you'll ruin the joke.

False alerts

[iMaple]

I havn't had any false alerts thanks to another semi dead man's safety, which sends me an email 15 days before my actual switch turns on.

I basically have 7 emails to ppl really close to me. One of my password go in one of those emails and that has access to all my email/personal passwords. I havnt put any banking data since I dont think thats going to be too difficult to get, if I am legally dead.

My deadmans switch is a simple cron job and I need to reset it once every 3 months.

Last will and chain contingency

[Barny]

1. Teleport without error to my own pocket dimension
2. dispell all negative effects on me
3. teleport a friendly cleric in to rez

On a little more realistic scale, how about you make a will?

IN THE EVENT OF DEATH EACH PERSON NAMED WILL RECEIVE THE ENCLOSED USB DRIVE WITH THEIR NAME ON IT... not overly difficult, and there are real legal comebacks if it is processed and you are not in fact deceased, instead of just looking like a tool.

It behaves in a very unprofessional manner

[dbIII]

Usually the entire point is to run stuff so you can get hit by the proverbial bus and someone else can take over - or so that you can theoretically take an extended holiday at some point. A dead man's switch sounds extremely unprofessional and probably should get you fired no matter how unethical the rest of the workplace looks (unless it is emailing documentation of actual criminal activity to the relevant authorities - but you should be doing that in person anyway).

I helped out for a few months in a place where the sysadmins and most of management had to be marched out the door by security for various expensive reasons. The place seemed full of dead man's switches but it reality was probably just a finicky cobbled together collection of systems that required intervention when cron jobs/scheduled tasks could have done it (and later did).

Currently the stuff that is being trialed would stop and someone would have to look at the tape schedule - but I thought the whole idea of working as a sysadmin was to set stuff up so everything else goes smoothly while you are sorting out the problem of the day, trying out new stuff, or reading slashdot.

Re:It behaves in a very unprofessional manner

[Rob the Bold]

The place seemed full of dead man's switches but it reality was probably just a finicky cobbled together collection of systems that required intervention when cron jobs/scheduled tasks could have done it (and later did).

This leads to this observation: Any sufficiently finicky cobbled together collection of systems that requires intervention is indistinguishable from a Dead Man's Switch.

You have 10 minutes to reach minimum safe distance

[pyrrhonist]

I wanted to see what others have their switches set up to do in the event you fail to check in.

My switch nukes everything from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

Jewish Mother Dead Man's Switch

[LunchSpecial]

If I don't check in with my Jewish mother every few days she'll go crazy and call everyone I might have once talked to.
I didn't set this up, it was genetics.

What if...

[jones_supa]

What if after your death your relatives just walk in and happily unplug your Linux boxes (having no idea how they even work) before your cool scripts even get a chance to run. :S

Feed the worms

[EmbeddedJanitor]

No matter how inflated our egos, after a few tears and a small feast for the worms, the planet will continue as if we never even happened. Why complicate matters with a dead man's switch?

Re:Feed the worms

[smchris]

You run with what you've got. If you're lucky some archaeologist will analyze how you were pickeled or swab your sinuses to see what was giving you hayfever in the day.

I guess in this case one is leaving a remnant for some paleopsychologist to analyze how 21st century man was so screwed up.

Plenty of people have left writings with the stipulation that they only be released some time after death. This is just an extension that allows do-it-yourself world interaction after your self is gone.

Re:Feed the worms

[mysidia]

The trouble with such a "dead man's switch" is, being sure it will work... Difficulty testing it. How do you know it's going to work? Such things need to be handled by the living, either by hiring some service, or having some friends, maybe one with the .EXE file, and two others with passwords required to actuate it.

A missing semicolon in a perl script, mistyped e-mail address or other parameter in the cron script, e-mail failure, ISP mail server changes, or the system losing power could cause some problems.

The cause of death could be some natural disaster that also destroys the machine with the switch is on, or at least knocks out the power and network (will anyone ever reconnect it to a network, or just sell what's left of your old machine?).

How can a program know you're dead if you don't check in? There are other possibilities such as alive but temporarily unable to use a computer. In the hospital, temporary amnesia, broken arms, etc.

To be sure, I think your switch would need a human to certify you're dead, or you need to subscribe to some service that allows your computer system to search death records/death certificates, and activate the switch only after your name also appears in the database.

Re:Feed the worms

[kalirion]

Maybe it will continue after your death, but considering the fact that the universe is merely a figment of my imagination, I predict that my death will have a greater impact.

Re:Feed the worms

[colesw]

Well then in that case a dead man's switch will certinaly have no purpose then.

Snow Crash

[locokamil]

Took my cue from Snow Crash and got my dead man's switch wired to a W80 warhead.

Internet dating

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok it sounds paranoid but on several occasions I've met up with someone from the internet.

I usually have a few details about them but given I'm into the alternative scene (and I don't mean music) you don't usually just pass these details to a friend.

Never the less, meeting up with someone like this for these kind of activities is down right dangerous, taking a few precautions is always sensible.

I usually put together a zip file filled with every piece of contact information I have for this person and use a cron job to email this in 48 hours if I dont stop it.

I also send a text message to myself prior to entering anyones house that I am meeting like this - the uk mobile phone companies will store location information for up to 3 years.

Ok its paranoid but I know several people (though usually women) that have been raped meeting like this - worse things could possibly happen as you are taking your life in your hands doing though. I'll admit that being a guy I am probably less vulnrable - but its better to be on the safe side and atleast give yourself some backup.

Its never gone off before... but its nice to know its set up - just in case.

Re:what I tell the guy with the gun

[Barny]

And after all that torture, all that pain and death, everyone who receives the message deletes it as spam....

I've got one.

[munpfazy]

I often take part in political protests, and have on occasion been arrested and held for days.

So, I put together a quick routine using perl and chron that dispatches email to my workplace, the local legal rep contact, and some friends. The later includes directions to a hidden key and asks them to feed my cat until they hear from me. I only enable the system when I'm expecting a significant risk of arrest. Once it's started, if I don't either log into the machine or send myself an email containing a specific string once every 24 hours, the alarm goes off.

Turns out it's never actually been used (except when testing.) I did get caught up in a surprise arrest not too long ago, but since my girlfriend was going to be at home and able to take care of any problems I didn't turn on the system.

But, if you ask me, trusting life-changing information to a php script is a really, really scary idea. Even my trivial "please feed my cat" letters included disclaimers explaining that they may have been falsely triggered.

Now, on the other hand, the possibility of spoofing dead man's letters from other people *does* sound promising.

Right on time

[linvir]

Good day for this story. somethingawful has a great article about this today. Quoth the website:

Section Two: Arranging my Funeral
When my body is prepared to my satisfaction, gather my people around it to weep and mourn and say their farewells. In the unlikely event that by the time of my death I have not become the leader of a people, please find those who love me best.

Go and read it.

Might I suggest a button...

[David Horn]

Might I suggest a button that you have to push once every 108 minutes? You could even link it to a computer and enter a sequence of numbers in to reset the timer...

This is true...

[Anonymous Coward]

About six years ago I had the misfortune of working for a company where our lead developer was a complete fruitcake. He wore all black every day, put his cigarettes out on his keyboard, you name it. He was one of those die-hard, born-in-the-soup hackers who started out configuring the household appliances to kill his family.

A genuine genius, and impossible to work with.

Well, one week he had happened to catch some variant on the face-melting death. I'm talking about the kind of influenza which turns your various facial orifices into creeping faucets of mucus. His wife assured me of a fever which would kill a lesser being. Sweat sheeted off his face like a rainstorm on a greenhouse roof. Needless to say he took some time off.

I get a call on Friday afternoon and it's him. The sounds coming from his end of the call were like the elephant throwing up and trying to talk into the little voice scrambling doohickey from the movie Scream. "You have to come get me," he says. "Why?" I reply. "Because I'm in no shape to drive, and I need to login to my computer there." Empathetically, I told him to stay there if he was sick. "You don't understand," he barfed, "If I don't login once a week..."

Yes. He had a DMS on our key development machines. One which he explained would lock up everything tighter than [gratuitous image deleted].

I was unthrilled to say the least, and refrained from chewing him out as he brought his barely clothed mass of plague into my beautiful car, coughed plumes of virii and bacteria into our office, made my boss practically bust a vein in his forehead as I led his nearly-blind ass to his computer-- all because he refused to share his password with us to access and protect company property --then finally have the nerve to croak a child-like plea for McDonald's from my back seat on the way home.

Once he was fully recovered we had the intervention and asked the usual questions, Why do you think this is necessary? What are you hiding from us? How screwed would we actually be if he actually died? Etc. In his paranoid, seen-the-Matrix-too-many-times universe, there was nothing wrong with installing some 'basic security'.

I did mention this guy was a genius, right?

The boss caved completely, and to be honest, we all knew there was no way in heck we could find whatever weird little bombs he'd hidden in our own system let alone the machine he'd practically joined to at the spine 12 hours a day. I quit the company that June, Mr. Maniac is still writing all their code and the company is quite successful.

So, yeah, DMS... Why send email to the unworthy after you're claimed in the Lord's rapture, when you can just grab your entire company by the nuts and twist?

(Posted as AC because I'm at work.)

Re:Why should I care?

[Rob T Firefly]

If I die and I have no family members and no friends, why should I care what is going to happen to my PCs, my servers, or my bank accounts?

Obviously, you should then entrust said property to the first complete stranger off the Internet who shows an interest, you wonderful lovely person you.

16 Mexicans

[solareagle]

"Every Setpember, 16 Mexicans have a great party celebrating the revolution of Mexico but the fact is, that the revolution was not complete. " Is it the same 16 Mexicans every year? If you are one of only 16 Mexicans to attend this great party, you really need a Dead Man's Switch giving some one else your party spot!

Because we're all a bit similar.

[Grendel Drago]

Because we're all somewhat similar, and things would suck mightily if nobody gave a thought to the world after their death. I suppose caring what people think of you is just a reflection of that. It's kind of like the Prisoner's Dilemma; sure, it may profit you to be a dick, but if everyone did it, we'd be in serious trouble.

My karma is my dead man's switch

[guruevi]

Whenever I'm close to computers and electronics, everything works smoothly. If I leave for more than a few days, the whole environment starts coming down, and it's not something I programmed, just something that happens.

My first job, I got fired, the next week the whole AD environment went down for hours on end
My second job, I quit, the next week, all firewalls went into some type of crash, the network was overloaded by a broadcast-zombie and there was some type of virus
I left home, went living somewhere else, the computer of my dad smoked, he had to buy a new one
Another job, I was a freelancer, I left, next week I got bunches of nagios alerts
Another job, I was a sysadmin, I got laid off, next week, nobody could receive e-mail and some type of update made it that networking got in trouble
Last job, I was a sysadmin, I got fired, yesterday somebody told me that the whole network was down (>30000 nodes)

My DMS

[Kazymyr]

...will encrypt all my personal data with quadruple-ROT13. That'll show'em!

Not if I can help it!

[Cybrex]

I'm wearing a DMS of sorts right now. It's a bracelet that contains post-mortem instructions to chill my body to 10 C, do CPR, push an anticoagulant, and the 800# of the cryonics company with which I'm signed up.

Of course, the most important single word on the bracelet is "REWARD". :-)

I've also made sure that my wife (who is in the process of signing up) and my friends (some of whom are also signed up) are on board with this, and willing to go to bat for me if the coroner decides to get uppity.

A Better Dead Man's Switch

[rdmiller3]

I hadn't really thought about this until the question came up, but it sounded like a fun mental challenge so I came up with a few ideas for improving the concept:

Multiple Activation Stages The first thing that came to my mind was a DMS to warn you that your main DMS will be triggered soon if you don't "check in". A second stage would send a similar warning to a few other people, encouraging them to find you and to personally warn you about the DMS themselves. You might want to disguise that one as a "request for critical maintenance" from a system which sounds important. Secure Check-In Protocol Have your DMS send you a unique check-in ID which you must use in your response. Or if a first-stage DMS has already been triggered, require a special password for deactivation of the continuing DMS sequence. Multiple Triggers More than one trigger input, in combination and/or in sequence, to more robustly define the conditions for activation. For example, if you haven't checked in recently AND several check-in reminder messages have bounced.

Ultimately though, if it's something important then I think a human being should be part of the process. A person would be a good sanity check. Nobody writes bug-free software, and I'm guessing that it could be pretty difficult to test a complicated DMS.

Re:Data Security and illegal activity

[Technician]

several TB of porn.

Nice idea, but that is not near as much of a problem as my tax returns, all my bank and credit card details including passphrases, pins, account numbers, contact numbers, etc.

If I am gone and the home alarm goes off, it drops power to the SOHO server locking the filesystem. Home burglaries do happen. Having someone get your porn collection is not a big deal. Having someoone steal your identity is a big deal.

The alarm interface is simple. The alarm output operates a relay between the SOHO server and the UPS.

don't assume data security equals illegal activity

I pratice prudent data security.