Google has a similar feature to give trusted people access to your data if you've been inactive for a given amount of time (so probably dead): https://www.google.com/settings/account/inactive

Wow, going through that was a bit emotional. You've got to set up an email that gets sent to your contacts when you've been inactive for >3months. That'll only happen if I'm dead or imprisoned so, yuck. Did not enjoy typing that one up.

Yea, I got to that step and closed out. I need to set aside some time this weekend and think about what to write.

Wow, what a frighteningly effective deadman switch. Normally I'd be worried about forgetting to reset it but in this case it's hard /not/ to use a Google product in a normal day.

That's a fantastic hidden feature - thanks for pointing it out.

Is it safe to put my 1Password's master-password into the message that is sent in case I'm dead?

How about the name of the book on your parents'/friend's bookshelf with your password lists in? Or some clue to a more secure hiding place.

I'd say no. I find an offline alternative to this.

The ability to attach files to the autorespond email is unfortunately arguable both for and against.

If at least one of your friends is technically minded you could probably use yEnc.

My security-mindset-sense is tingling..

Could be an attack vector when you know someone's google usage will be sparse.

"im ded :( plz walk doggie"

Man, that's not how I would want to find out that a friend or family member has passed away.

:-|

I don't know, getting that as a final joke from the right friend or younger family member might be my favorite way to be informed, and then I'd go walk their dog. I'd still be sad, of course, but there's really no good way to be informed of this. In all likely hood, I'd already be informed, and then I'd get this half-assed reminder and be all "oh my god, it's so like them!"

Actually when considering likelihood, they're probably on vacation and forgot to pause the program. A better message might be along the lines of: "Hi this is Sean's personal assistant script: I can't confirm that his puppy has been getting walked would you check into that for me? Spare key is..."

I agree in part, but I think that if you are setting up such a message, it's important that you inform your friends and family of the message while you are still alive, and probably you should also tell them that the message might end up getting sent while you are still alive because you forgot or for some other reason didn't get around to confirming that you are alive still in time.

Right -- the message is customizable, and after you save your contacts, it prompts you with a message you can text them to let them know about the service.

Yeah, you customize your own message -- write whatever you'd want to send, e.g. the location of a spare key.

well but it's funny enough not to cause much harm on a false alarm, while still triggering research in to the doggie/death situation :)

Also, the message is customizable. I'm kind of surprised at how many commenters didn't assume it would be, so I'll need to think about how to change the presentation.

Oh, it's all customizable. You write whatever you want, like "I haven't checked in in a day -- please make sure I'm alright."

right? How horrible...

You can set the message to whatever you want; the message in the screenshots is just in keeping with the overall tone of the site.

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Can you make a version of this that just texts my mom that "I'm okay". That'd be perfect.

P.S: Yes I'm thirty. Y'all don't know Indian moms.

I'm over thirty. This isn't Indian specific...

Also over 30, starting to want them to send me messages that they're ok.

You could write a cron job that uses Twilio. I like to optimise for success.

"- Text me when you arrive"

5 minutes later..

"- I arrived. No assassins encountered."

But mum, look, if anything has happened you'll get a bloody phone call. With this system my not texting just primes you to worry more, despite the far higher likelihood that I forgot than that I'm dead.

Literally the best result is that you start worrying I'm not ok a few hours before finding out for certain that I'm not. So let's assume success, and agree that in case of failure you're going to have a very bad day anyway and this doesn't really help mitigate anything at all.

(this does not work)

It never works.

Oh, I know. I know. I'll be damned if it's going to stop me trying though...

Kudos for friendly easy-going presentation and sleek implementation, enjoyed checking it out. Would’ve signed up were I in the market!

> "were I in the market"

> the market of dying

is there something about your mortality that you'd like to tell us?

I don’t have a dog.

Your post just made my morning :)

I genuinely laughed out loud at this in my office, thanks for making my day of copy changes better @goblin89

Thanks! Much appreciated :)

"The workaround is to POST directly from the browser to an S3 bucket and then handle that AWS event with a Lambda. "

Great article and nice project. Do you upload an "event" to a queue type folder on S3? what triggers the Lambda function after the file upload?

S3 has built-in functionality to trigger a Lambda function when certain events occur (e.g., object creation). For example, see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/with-s3-example.....

Thanks so much :)

As @jdale27 said, there's built-in functionality with AWS that lets you subscribe to various events, e.g. S3 uploads, CloudWatch logs, etc.

Have you ever had any false alarms with this?

I have not!

After the final one hour warning, it should call you and if you pick up, the alarm cancels. So a final step that's not passive and only requires picking up the phone instead of opening the texting app and clicking a link. Also helps if you're somewhere where you have SMS/calling but no data. Although in that case, being able to reply "I no ded" would be more reliable.

In which case your murderer answers the call.

Would it be much harder to process a tone-based password prompt?

So you receive a call and it just beeps on says "enter passcode" and you enter the code. Though to be honest it's highly unlikely that will the hypothetical murderer would pick up a phone call unless they were expecting it...

Interesting idea -- thanks for the suggestion

This is fantastic, made me laugh. Brilliant idea

Haha -- thanks, Dave -- glad you like it :)

really like the clean design of the front-end, did you use anything special to create it?

Looks like Semantic UI.

http://semantic-ui.com/

Indeed, as @axlee said, Semantic UI. Highly recommended.

If I iz ded and I selected 17 days, my dog is ded to.

You should do a Show HN for this.

Thanks! I'll try to get something together next week.

next week: looks like mk4p hasn't showed up... time for somebody to break in and feed his puppy?

Are the SMS being sent from Lambda or another service like Twilio?

There's a scheduled Lambda that sends messages via Twilio.

Nice! But what if I lose my mobile phone or change my number? :D

Wellll, you could set it to check every 1-30 days, so maybe set it to check less frequently?

Wouldn't solve the changing-your-number thing, but I'm guessing you don't do that too often.

first world problems :)

Is it weird that I'm quite interested to final out how many "messages to contacts" have been sent out so far? :P