If you require support or have any questions about the service, you can email us at hi@stochastictechnologies.com
The service works thus: You write some messages and specify when you want Dead Man's Switch to check up on you. These dates are called "intervals". For example, for intervals of "15, 30, 60", Dead Man's Switch will email you 15 and 30 days after your last checkin. If you don't check in again in that period of time, the messages with that interval will be sent to the message recipient(s) 60 days after your last checkin. Messages are sent independently, so messages with shorter intervals will be sent before those with longer ones.
Note that free accounts are limited to two-day intervals, so your messages will be sent after two days on a free account. This is so you can test the service and upgrade if you'd like longer intervals.
To add a message, go to your home page by the link on the toolbar on top after logging in and click write a new message. Fill in the required fields and press "save message".
You can become a premium member by visiting the Plans and pricing page after you have created an account.
To test the service, add a new message and, when asked to specify the intervals on which you would like to be contacted, select "Test message". This will make Dead Man's Switch contact you the next day to make sure you are responsive and send the email to the recipient(s) you have specified one day after that if you do not respond. This way, you do not have to wait for the full two months to test the service, but a mere two days.
We don't have to outlive you! If the service shuts down while you're alive, we'll send you an email well in advance so you can switch services. That said, the service has been running successfully since 2007.
You can specify your own intervals if you become a Premium member. If you become a Premium member, the extra options for intervals will become available to you.
Intervals work like this: All numbers except the last are days to email you on since your last checkin. The last number is when to send out your messages, in days after the last checkin. For example, if you enter 3, 19, 22, 50, Dead Man's Switch will email you 3 days after your last checkin, then 19 days after it, then 22, and finally send all your emails 50 days after your last checkin.
If you check back in at any point before 50 days, the timer resets.
If you would like to send a message to many people at the same time just add multiple addresses in the "recipients" field, separated by a comma. These recipients won't be aware of each other, each message is sent separately to each recipient.
There is a limit to how many people per message you can add if you are a regular user.
To ensure that your messages will not be read by anyone other than the intended recipient, the messages are only ever stored securely on our servers. The messages are destroyed after they are sent, and you can delete them at any time.
If this is not enough, you can encrypt your messages using symmetric or asymmetric encryption using widely available software like PGP or GPG. this will ensure that no-one other than the intended recipient will ever be able to see the contents of your message.
That having been said, this service is meant for casual use by the average person. Please don't use the service if you need strong guarantees of privacy, e.g. if you are a whistleblower or any similar life-and-death situation. It is NOT meant to safeguard against high-value messages.
You can find the terms of service here.
From time to time, users contact us and ask us what the best way to configure some common use cases is. We've written a few pages below for you to read:
