It avoids folks signing up, canceling the card and then riding for free.
Second, I don't know what payment you're using, but seriously consider paypal if you're not already, because I'm pretty sure you can setup yearly recurring "subscriptions" on paypal and people are much more likely to keep their paypal funding sources up to date. So you're not going to have to nag them to update credit card info every couple years and they're less likely to have occasion to think "do I really want to pay for this", it'll just be pay automatically.
I'm using Stripe at the moment.
On the other hand, this is what I use BitWarden for, so my wife has access to important accounts and vice-versa. BitWarden does provide free shared passwords for 2 users.
In your case with Bitwarden you're sharing access to your credentials and such with your wife right now, today, right?
With Passbox I'm looking to defer that access for data that makes sense. In my case I'm currently single and no one else has access to my iPhone but if I passed then maybe my mom or best friend should have that - as a hypothetical.
I just set my wife's email as the recovery address for my Gmail, figuring she can reset most of the important stuff from there.
But that's only a solution for "get into my accounts when I'm dead", not "share access to these things right now", and doesn't have the added benefit of a relatively secure password manager. And it ties you to Google, which may not be the wisest decision (but of course you could do something similar with a different service).
If you're finding that the users you're sharing your passbox with are requesting your passwords every day, that's probably signal enough to remove them so they automatically use the service less. I'd expect the lifetime marginal cost of an additional user here to be a very small percentage of the revenue for that client.
This is an interesting scenario I've thought about. Thanks for sharing!
It could be the case that once the "death trigger" happens there's a countdown for the requesting user to download the data and then I (Passbox) locks everything down or deletes the original data or something. To be determined...
An initial thought I had was to look at it as being akin to an insurance policy of sorts and that's what sort of led me down the recurring revenue path. Definitely will consider one-time fees for the future! Thanks again!
I'd say your service is the internet version of someone creating their will, and leaving it with a friend or family member, which are all one-off costs.
While I like the general idea, I do have mixed feelings storing so much valuable data online, on servers of a company I don't know, that operates in the US.
Do your feelings change at all with knowing that the data is completely encrypted at rest and inaccessible by me/the company even though I have access to the database?
1- give access to one of you trusted contact accounts
2- disable sending notifications to the account holders email
3- 3letter agency clicks on request data
4- data gets released ( as it will not get denied if the account holder does not receive a notification)
1 - Even with access to the trusted contact's account a passphrase/access key (specific to the main account and not stored by the service) is required
2 - Interesting scenario but still requires the above-mentioned access key
3 - Same as above two points even after being approved
4 - Won't get released without the key
I understand that your service is encrypting the data before saving it (vs that happening completely on the client and only encrypted data being sent to you), so there's nothing stopping you from logging it to a plain text file (even accidentally). Given that these passwords will likely hold the keys to that person's identity, that's a huge amount of trust that they need to have in you, your technical abilities and future decisions.
Overall that's one uphill challenge I've seen emerge as I've chatted with folks about the product: inspiring trust.
do i provide the trusted contact the access key or how does that work?
When is it generated?
What if add a new trusted contact or remove one how does that change things?
What’s funny is earlier versions of the landing page had way more detail for what you’re asking about and I got chided for it during user testing reviews haha.
Every user generates their own key (which can make it more friendly) and would need to provide it to their contacts on their own. It’s required to be set before you add any data.
Modifying users doesn’t change anything for me. Any new contact would need to be sent the same key or you can change it! Old users wouldn’t be able to request access regardless of knowing your (maybe old) key.
After his passing, no one knew how to get on his server and/or his domain registrar's account so as a result, someone else snatched up his personal site as soon as it expired, and pretended to be him for several years.
I really love hearing about projects like yours cause I'd definitely want to avoid stuff like that!
That's a pretty easy way to shut down this service with no notice. Absurdist, sure. But that is the stakes with this kind of service.
I created Passbox after buying my first motorcycle and thinking that if anything happened to me on it I'd like for my devices/accounts/photos and such to not be walled off forever.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the app, approach and any feedback in general! Thanks!