About This Site

A few years ago, I was attending a conference for Web Developers in San Francisco. Over coffee one afternoon, several of us got into a conversation that has been stuck in my mind ever since: it was about how screwed our companies/clients would be if any of us were to abruptly vanish. In many cases, the access information mission critical systems for major corporations and government offices existed in one place only - between our ears - and if anything were to happen to one of us, it would be a catastrophe.

It occurred to me that, if a bomb were to go off in Moscone Center that very afternoon, instantly wiping out a few thousand geeks who held the keys to so few thousand information systems, it could do serious damage to the world economy. The horror of that epiphany lurks in the back of my mind, even to this day.

Upon my return to work, I immediately set up a document containing all the critical information about the systems I managed. To keep that data safe, I encrypted the document, burned it to a CD, and wiped my hard drive. I dropped the CD into a sleeve, taped it to the underside of my keyboard , and breathed a sigh of relief.

I slept more soundly that night than in the preceding ones, but work at about three in the morning with the sudden realization that what I had done was no better. If anything should happen to me, nobody would know about the CD, and nobody would have the encryption key to decrypt its precious contents.

Immediately, I set to work on a program that I would install on my workstation the next day, one that would send out a "death notice" if I failed to log in for a week, which would tell my staff about the CD and provide them with the key to unlock it. Over time, I had to improve the program - it needed a function to send me an e-mail reminder to log in, and I way that I could delay sending the death notice if I were going to be on vacation for a while, and so on. All things considered, it seemed to be time well spent.

Some time later, it occurred to me that I could use the same kind of system for my private life. While all of my important papers are kept in a safe deposit box, nobody knows what bank that's in or where to find the key. I've got two or three different life insurance accounts, about a dozen banking and investment accounts, and updated copy of my will at my attorneys office - but nobody knows about all of it but me.

And so, I set up a similar system on a Web server: a "death notice" that would be sent out to various friends and family, an e-mai l reminder and web page icon to remind me to log in, a function to delay the notice in times when I'll be out of town without Internet access, etc. I mentioned this system to a friend of mine, and he mentioned it to a few other people, and everyone seemed to want to set up a similar system.

The site started out with about a dozen people, friends or friends of friends - but then it started getting more widespread notice when someone would ask about the icon that appeared on one of these peoples' home pages, asking if they could get one, too. Since I had already set up a system that could accommodate multiple users, it was easy enough to do - but each request meant taking ten or fifteen minutes out of my day to set up an account. I figured it would be a lot easier just to build a system that would enable people to create their own accounts. That way, I could just shoot them an URL and they could take care of it themselves. The end result of all of that is the site you're currently visiting.

To learn more about this site, visit the "Using LifeStatus" page and browse the FAQ.