What happens to your accounts if you get hit by a bus tomorrow?

Your family can't reach your photos, your domain renews, your password vault locks them out forever. Cloud services have clumsy "legacy" features that scan your data to work. You can build something better in an afternoon — and nobody but you holds the keys.

A dead man's switch is a timer. You check in regularly. If you stop checking in for too long, it does one thing: sends a pre-written message to someone you trust. That's it. Let's build a private one.

What you need

  • A small always-on machine (a Raspberry Pi, an old laptop, or a cheap VPS)
  • A free email-sending account or your own mail relay
  • 20 minutes

No paid app. No third party reading your final message.

Step 1: Write the message

Create a plain text file. Keep it simple:

If you got this, I haven't checked in for 14 days.
My password vault export is attached.
The master phrase is written inside the blue notebook.

Never put the actual master password in the email. Point to where it physically lives. The email triggers the handoff; the real secret stays offline.

Step 2: Make the check-in

Create a file that tracks the last time you were alive:

date +%s > /home/me/lastcheckin

Running that command resets your timer. Make checking in dead easy. Bookmark a tiny script, or set a phone shortcut over SSH. Once a week is plenty.

Step 3: The watcher

Write a script that runs daily and compares today to your last check-in:

#!/bin/bash
LAST=$(cat /home/me/lastcheckin)
NOW=$(date +%s)
DAYS=$(( (NOW - LAST) / 86400 ))

if [ "$DAYS" -ge 14 ]; then
  mail -s "Important" [email protected] < /home/me/message.txt
fi

Adjust the 14 to whatever gap means "something is wrong." Two weeks is sensible — long enough to survive a vacation, short enough to matter.

Step 4: Schedule it

Add it to cron so it runs every morning:

0 8 * * * /home/me/watcher.sh

Step 5: Test it honestly

Set the threshold to 1 day. Don't check in. Confirm the email actually arrives tomorrow. A switch you never tested is a switch that fails when it matters most.

Why self-host this

Commercial dead-man services hold your final message on their servers. They can read it, get breached, or shut down. Your version lives on hardware you own. The trigger fires only on your terms, and the message never touches a stranger's database.

Your one action today: write the message file and run the check-in command once. The timer starts the moment you do — and from then on, staying alive is as simple as clicking a bookmark.