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Anonymous Dead Man's Switch

Anonymous Dead Man's Switch

by alcazar·Feb 25, 2026·5 points·6 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidSolve My ProblemSlickNiche Gem

Dead Man's Switch with Mullvad-style anonymous accounts and 128-bit entropy.

Strengths
  • •Anonymous account model (12-word seed + libsodium derivation) mirrors Mullvad's privacy ethos; no email lockdown.
  • •Escalating grace periods prevent accidental delivery on a missed notification; thoughtful UX for a sensitive use case.
  • •End-to-end encrypted storage; multi-channel reminders (email, Signal, Telegram) and flexible contact groups add real value.
Weaknesses
  • •Dead Man's Switch as a category is solved (Silent Circle's Dead Drop, legacy.com, afterlife.com); novelty is the UX, not the concept.
  • •$20/year is cheap but lacks proof of reliability; customer needs certainty that this service will actually fire and deliver when critical.
Category
Security
Target Audience

Privacy-conscious individuals protecting digital assets (wallets, passwords, legal docs) for emergency handoff

Similar To

Legacy.com · Silent Circle · Cake Life

Post Description

Hey HN, I'm John from Alcazar. We just launched a Dead Man’s Switch that uses anonymous accounts instead of email+password.

I'm a fan of Mullvad and their approach to accounts, so I copied it. But instead of 16 digits (53 bits of entropy), we generate 12 random words from the Monero wordlist (128 bits) and derive the account identifier+"password" using libsodium.

The app is built on top of our existing Flare code and infrastructure. It uses SvelteKit, Shadcn, Tailwind CSS on the frontend, and FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Celery on the backend. It’s hosted on Hetzner and uses Scaleway for sending email.

I’d appreciate any feedback (positive or negative) on the product. I’ll be in the comments responding to questions.

Website: https://alcazarsec.com/deadmanswitch

Signup (quick & anonymous): https://switch.alcazarsec.com/signup

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DayTap – A privacy-first dead man's switch iOS app

The UX is delightfully minimal — one big "I'm OK" button, configurable guardians, and a check-in window — and the author leaned on Claude Code plus multi-role LLM reviews to shore up gaps in their Swift work, which is an interesting workflow experiment. The privacy-forward touches shown on the landing page (encrypted, no GPS) are promising, but critical backend details and delivery guarantees are missing, and the core idea is familiar rather than novel.

Niche GemShip It
mitch292
103mo ago