Privacy tools
Dead man's switch
A safeguard that watches for your absence. If you stop checking in for a period you choose, zcrypt sends a message to a contact you trust: a way to make sure someone is alerted if something happens to you.
What it does
A dead man’s switch fires when you stop doing something. Here, that something is signing in. You nominate a trusted contact and a timeout; if you don’t check in before the timeout elapses, zcrypt sends that contact an email.
Setting it up
From settings, configure the switch with:
- •Contact email, who gets notified. A contact name is optional.
- •Timeout: anywhere from 7 to 365 days of inactivity before it fires.
- •A message: optional text included in the email to your contact. It is not end-to-end encrypted: the server and the email provider can read it, so do not put secrets in it.
You can enable, disable, or delete the switch at any time.
Checking in
Every login counts as a check-in and resets the timer. As long as you keep signing in within your chosen window, the switch never fires. So the practical rule is simple: log in at least once per timeout period to stay silent.
What it does (and doesn't) do
Read this before you rely on it
The dead man’s switch sends a notification email to your contact. That is all it does.
It does not deliver your files, and it does not hand over any keys, because zcrypt is zero-knowledge, there are no keys on our side to give anyone. We cannot decrypt your vault, so the switch cannot pass your data to your contact.
There is an “include files” option, but it only changes the wording of the email. It does not attach, transfer, list, or unlock anything. If you want a contact to be able to reach your actual files, you must arrange that yourself (for example, by sharing a passphrase through your own trusted channel).