Thread

1. evil-olive · 1789796481 · focus · HN ↗

   > If you don't log into the app for months

   > After 90 days of countdown, 21 days of warnings, and 14 days of grace, the envelope opens

   vs

   > it needs that company to still exist and be honest on the day it matters

   > there's no company in the middle

   which is it?

   there's no middleman, but also I need to log in to your app regularly to avoid being declared dead?

   1. skeledrew · 1789806568 · focus · HN ↗

      > I need to log in to your app regularly to avoid being declared dead?

      Technically, until we get to a point where we still have embedded "life signal" chips, there's no way to automatically detect that someone has died. Other than those who've actually seen a body, the best we have is "not seen - at Y - for a while".

      1. jpage2 · 1790011260 · focus · HN ↗

         Yes ty for making that point! And it's worth mentioning that the letters open not close whenever someone goes inactive rather than are closed forever.
   2. jpage2 · 1790010949 · focus · HN ↗

      You're right, sorry I should have painted the picture in a better way because I just basically shifted the middleman dependency compared to 1password or something.

      With a company ran vault, they can mess up by failing to exist, not being honest, and they have to make the correct decision when someone dies.

      With Seal, no single person makes the decision when the person is gone/inactive. There's no company to decrypt anything, which is what I was trying to paint the picture of with "no company in the middle", but yeah you have to also make sure the software exists so they can check in.

      The envelopes also will open when the user can no longer check in because the countdown will end and the family can use the keys to decrypt without a backend needed.

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