The idea of a dead man's switch
A dead man's switch is a service that checks on you. Every so often it emails or pings you. If you do not respond within a set time, it assumes you have died and sends your messages to the people you named.
What can go wrong
- A false alarm. You change your email address, lose your phone, spend a month in the hospital or go somewhere with no signal. The service sees silence and sends.
- It cannot be undone. Once a private message has been delivered, you cannot take it back.
- The opposite problem. If you die suddenly and your pings keep getting answered by a forgotten auto-reply, the switch may never fire.
What a trusted person offers
A trusted person, sometimes called a keeper, delegate or executor, is a human being who knows you. When you die, they tell the service. A person is much less likely to report a death that has not happened, and can tell the service what they know.
- The risk: they might forget, move away or be hard to reach. Naming two people covers that.
- A second confirmation makes it harder for one mistaken or dishonest report to start a release.
The best of both
The safest design uses a person to start the process and a short check-in window to stop it. A person reports, then you are asked, "Are you still here?" If you are, one tap cancels it. Your trusted people can also stop a report they know is wrong.
That is how Still Hello works. Nothing starts because you went quiet. A keeper has to report, a second keeper confirms, and then you and your keepers have 48 hours to say it is a mistake. See how posthumous message services compare.
Ready to leave your messages?
It takes about fifteen minutes. You pay once, and nothing is ever sent while you are alive.