Dead man's switch FAQ

Imok is a dead man's switch for solopreneurs and indie founders. You write an encrypted handover packet — your business continuity instructions — and check in on a schedule. If you stop checking in, the packet is automatically delivered to a successor you designated. That's the entire product.

Yes. Arranging for your own information to be delivered to a person you choose is legal. Imok is not a legal document and doesn't transfer ownership of anything — it delivers instructions. For the legal side (wills, executors, account inheritance), talk to an estate planning professional.

No. Imok is not a legal document, not estate planning advice, and not a substitute for a will. It solves the practical problem of someone being able to find and operate your business if you're suddenly unavailable. See digital will vs. Imok for the full comparison.

People who run businesses alone: solopreneurs, indie founders, freelancers, and SaaS owners. If your business would stall the moment you're unavailable, it was built for you. It's not a team tool.

No. Password managers store credentials; Imok stores one encrypted handover packet — written instructions about your business, which may reference where credentials live. It also doesn't do file storage. One job: heartbeat-triggered handover.

Whatever your successor needs to run, hand off, or wind down the business: where the accounts and data live, who your clients or customers are, what's recurring (billing, renewals, payroll), and what to do first. Write it like an onboarding doc for someone smart who knows nothing about your business.

About 15 minutes: write your packet, set your passphrase, choose a check-in interval, and name a trusted contact and a successor. You can edit everything later. Sign up is by magic-link email — there's no password to create.

You check in on a schedule to prove you're around; if you stop, the system assumes something happened and carries out your pre-set action. In Imok, that action is releasing your encrypted handover packet to your successor. The full sequence is on how it works.

Nothing is released right away. You get 5 days of reminder emails first (the REMINDING stage), then your trusted contact is notified once, and only after your grace period does the packet release. One check-in at any point resets everything to ACTIVE.

Yes. You can adjust your check-in interval or pause the switch before you go, then resume when you're back. Just remember to resume it — a paused switch protects nothing. A vacation is the most common cause of false silence, so plan it before you leave.

You choose the interval in days — every few days, weekly, or longer. Pick a rhythm you can keep even in busy weeks; the reminders give you 5 days of slack on top of it.

The trusted contact is a human check before release. If you stay silent through the reminders, they receive one neutral message asking them to see if you're okay. They act as a circuit breaker against false alarms — and they never learn a packet exists.

Yes. The manual "Release now" override moves your switch straight to RELEASED and sends the reveal link to your successor. It requires a typed confirmation so it can't happen by accident. Most people never use it.

Update it in your settings anytime — keeping the successor's email current is your responsibility, since the reveal link goes to that address. We recommend reviewing your packet and contacts every few months, the same way you'd review any important document.

No. Your packet is encrypted in your browser with AES-256-GCM before upload, and the passphrase-derived key never leaves your device. Our servers store only ciphertext, the IV, the salt, and the iteration count. There is nothing readable for us to see — full details on the security page.

The packet is unrecoverable — permanently. We cannot recover or reset your passphrase because we never see it. The fix is to write a new packet with a new passphrase and re-share it with your successor through whatever channel you used before.

No — deliberately. Their single notification is a neutral "please check on this person" message with no mention of a packet, handover, or reveal link. Your plans stay private if the alert is a false alarm, and the trusted contact can't intercept the packet.

Attackers get encrypted packets (useless without each owner's passphrase) and SHA-256 hashes of tokens (not the tokens). There's no password database — sign-in is by magic-link email. The design goal is that a full breach yields nothing usable.

They open their one-time reveal link, which fetches the ciphertext and decrypts it in their own browser using the passphrase you arranged to share with them separately. The plaintext never travels over the network. The link expires after 30 days or first use.

Because a reset mechanism is a backdoor, and a backdoor means we could read your packet. We'd rather lose your packet than be able to read it — that trade-off is the whole point of zero-knowledge design. See zero-knowledge encryption explained simply.

Yes, completely free while in early access — no credit card, no trial countdown. After launch we plan one flat plan around $2.9/month or $29/year with everything included, and early users get advance notice before anything changes. Details on the pricing page.

Your switch pauses — it never triggers a release. A billing lapse freezes the state machine; it cannot deliver your packet to anyone. Re-activate and the switch resumes from a clean ACTIVE state.

A dead man's switch must keep working for years — sending emails, watching check-ins, storing ciphertext, and being reliable on the worst possible day. A one-time price can't honestly fund that; a small flat subscription keeps us in business so your switch stays armed.

No. Never. We can't even read your packet — it's encrypted in your browser — and we don't sell, rent, or share your email address or usage data with anyone.

That's what the staged sequence is for. Even if you're unable to check in, your trusted contact gets a nudge before anything releases — and if you recover and check in during REMINDING or CONTACTING_TRUSTED, the switch returns to ACTIVE and nothing was ever released.

It's designed to be nearly impossible: a missed check-in plus 5 ignored reminder days plus your grace period plus a silent trusted contact must all happen first. If it somehow still occurs, the reveal link alone is useless without the passphrase, which only your successor arrangement provides.

The link expires after 30 days. If it expires unrevealed, the ciphertext remains stored but unreachable through that link — RELEASED is a terminal state, so treat your successor's email and your passphrase-sharing arrangement as things to keep current.

Then they can't decrypt the packet — we can't help, because we never have the passphrase. This is why we recommend sharing the passphrase in a durable way (e.g., with your other important documents) rather than a text message they might lose.

The reveal link goes to your successor's email, not yours — so the state of your own inbox after RELEASED doesn't matter for delivery. Your email only needs to work for check-ins and reminders while you're around.

Imok is deliberately focused: one switch, one encrypted handover packet, one trusted contact, one successor. That constraint keeps the product simple and the security model tight. If your situation needs multiple beneficiaries, that's a sign you also need proper estate planning alongside Imok.

A dead man's switch that can vanish is worse than none, so we take longevity seriously — it's also why we plan a sustainable flat subscription rather than a one-time fee. If the service ever wound down, our commitment is to notify all users well in advance so you can export your arrangements and set up an alternative.

Yes. Self-custody holders use the packet to tell family where their seed backups are hidden and how to recover them, delivered automatically if they stop checking in. See bitcoin inheritance with Imok and the full planning guide.

No — never. Put the locations of your seed backups and recovery instructions in the packet, not the seed words. Anyone holding your reveal link and packet passphrase gets plaintext; a seed in plaintext can be spent remotely, while a location still requires physical access.

With the packet passphrase you arrange to share separately — a sealed envelope with their documents, your attorney, or their password manager. We cannot recover the passphrase for you; that's what zero-knowledge means. Tell your successor today that this arrangement exists.

No — it solves the operational problem (your family can actually find and recover the coins), not the legal one. Imok is not a will or legal document. For clean legal transfer, especially of large holdings, pair it with estate documents from an attorney.