Topic: Heritage/Insurance Encapsuled Encryption System (Read 345 times)

The idea is quite nice, but I'm not completely sure if this is the way to go. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think this could work exactly how it's portaraied, but the overall general idea is amazing. If we take a look at the Insurance industry and some of its statistics we shoudl understand why this is something that we need to potentially focus on in the future. I think it could be done by the insurance companies themselves, not necessarly by thir party companies and follow the path of idea that you had, but rethought a bit on the general population.

I'm not against automation, don't get me wrong, but the ultimate utility of automation and machinery is to serve humans somehow. We wouldn't be polluting the planet and crave for power sources just for fun.

What is interesting atm, is to discuss possible flaws and exploits, trim and cook the idea, eventually even weight it's pros and cons against other concurrent systems that may show up. But discussing about hypothetical software... What would be the point?

And death of someone is not to be taken lighten; the deceased could well blow his money on women and cars instead of save anything, but if he chose another path and his soul must have some way to rest in peace about the loved ones he left behind. So we must add some romantic and human vector to the whole system. Taken must of us, if not all, use strong passwords and/or strong security systems, way too complex sometimes, figure a way to open it when needed is far from an easy task or, like the widow of the Canadian exchange owner, crypto ends locked for good, practically dying with the owner.

Thank you for your offer.

300 to 1000 people?  lol

I didn't know you had resistance to automation, so I'm sorry for bringing it up again.  Personally, I would rather have something than remember something, so I've never used phrase codes. 

I cannot contribute constructively to your idea, but I can offer you free hosting if you need a place to organize. 

Now your trust party is a batalion of people?

Let's put things a bit straight here; there're two opposite PoV in inheritances, the PoV of the heirs, who probably want the money ASAP, but that's their problem, and the person who actually gathered the wealth and eventually deceased. My system is towards the PoV of the former, not heirs, a more personal and human way to provide a last will, not some random characters and an automatic email with a weird key of sorts, which could land in some spam box.

If you have a better idea: develop and present it. But it turns kind of annoying to keep reading "I would send emails", "I would go with smart contracts", "I would use multi sig", "I would... whatever" -> Great! Do it!

A valid idea and valid discussion about this issue is on how to trim its usage, like AGD addressed and posed the issue.

Technology has the sole purpose of serving "rotting flesh", without humans all of Bitcoin, all of the electronic junk we created, would be rendered plain useless and worthless.

If my trusted authority is 11 of my family, I'm not going to worry about 6 of them deciding to commit fraud against me.

You didn't read/understand my idea, so I'm sorry for the hijack.  

So, what if your trusted third party get acquainted with one of the interested parties? Guess what... you'll "die early" and someone will be sharing your wealth while you entertain yourself finding a lawyer and engage the funny and long civil court processing.

To not mention that would be a plain money-grab...

You type in the names and email addresses of your friends.   Done!

The key is automation, and avoiding rotting meat (the human memory lol)

@Vod

How is that any easier?!

But your idea doesn't sound like it's for dummies - it's fairly complicated.

How about something like this?

Trust an authority to declare you dead.
Trust three friends.
Trust the chaincode.

Create your information package, and put it on hyperfabric.  The smart contract can execute once it receives notification from authority.  After a delay, the package can be delivered.   Each of the three of the friends are notified and can further delay the delivery in case of fraud.  The authority can bring you back to life.  
 
This "authority" can be as simple as an odd number (no ties) of your friends/family.

Those are good questions indeed.
The informatics part is quite straight forward, it's just encrypt, encrypt, encrypt.
The human part however isn't that easy, and I believe there's no "one-size fits all" solution for it and my system isn't fail proof.

If one of the addressees dies shortly after you, the best shot would be to resource his closest relative (wife, husband, sons...). We have "layers of communication", there are things we say to family, but not to friends or strangers, others maybe to friends but not even to family.

For the custody, you could use a testament lawyer office, or you can intruct one of the addressees (preferentially not the #1) or a third party you trust, or you can leave it in a vault with a note on what to do next.

Yes, it's possible, however the other 2 already gave their answers, so they're already triggered by what's going on and would probably chase down or sue that last one.

EDIT:
One of the cases that inspired me to do this: https://www.newser.com/story/270824/crypto-investors-woe-widow-cant-open-founders-laptop.html

I was thinking about one of the 3 dies AFTER me and BEFORE he was able to answer the questions, but your answer explained it anyway.

Another question: How would they know about this file? Do I have to give them the file incl the questions BEFORE I die? Wouldn't this lead to possible collusion between the 3 while I'm alive?
I mean I could use a dead man's switch, but this is not part of your idea, is it?

Another thing is this one: What if I die and the 3 people start answering questions to open the layers until it comes to the last question, where only one person is able to unlock the money, without the need for the other two. If he takes the file which is almost resolved, he could go away, answer the last question alone and keep the money. Is this possible with your script?

If one party dies before you do, don't forget to redo your system. As no, there's no way to skip or create partial solvers.
About forgetting, they've all the tries they want to remember, will take them longer to solve.

The encryption system works like peeling an onion; each layer of encrypted text just uncovers the next layer of encrypted text.

If Paul, Sue or John dies before being able to answering all 3 questions or one of them forgets only one answer, the remaining two will not be able to decrypt the file, am I right? Is there a way to let it work like a 2 of 3 multi sig?

@OgNasty

Yes, you can call it a sort of "Encryption for Dummies", it is intended for the easiest usage possible assuming one or several of the target parties couldn't be tech savvy.
IDK any already in place system for this purpose of "e-Testaments". As for memory loss, you will probably also forget you'd any crypto assets, so the custodian part can show up and tell you about your system and those you need to summon to help you out on regain access.
There's a lot of human side to this system, creating a good Q&A set is one of them.

@STT

You can combine it with a dead man's switch for sending the said email (but don't forget email services die as well, imagine you'd an @cjb.net; wouldn't be of much use now), just sending the msg.js (where the encrypted final text resides) and the other two files, the HTML and CryptoJS.js, as attachment.
But this shouldn't obviously be the "only option" or the "only path", just "another option" or "another way".

Sounds like PGP only with security questions instead of private keys.  I'm not sure about your claim it is safe against memory loss though.  Don't you have to then rely on others to not forget the answers to their questions, or to select questions that can't be known by anyone else?  I like the effort, but I'd like to better understand the benefits to using this system as opposed to systems already in place.  It appears the lack of needing a key makes it a bit of an 'Encryption For Dummies' service.  Is that the intended benefit?  

Ideally I always prefer a simple system but multi sign could be the best route least easily taken advantage of before time. I always thought the simplest system would be a delayed email and you would have to refer to the password indirectly but recently familiar to all parties previously  for other reasons.  Perhaps thats not secure enough but I wouldn't want to rely on one path in its entirety.  There's probably somewhere that allows something to be sent on a date in the future and you can just keep renewing that date.

Sorry, by "sell" I meant convince others, not profit. 

Sending emails including detailed/vetted instructions, along with links is infinitely better than simply asking a friend to do this and hoping they understand what you mean.

People make money developing ways to use free services more efficiently.   

Not trying to sell anything, it's GPL licensed, and it doesn't send any email or communicate anywhere at all.
But probably can be handy for lawyer offices that offers testament's custody services.

I think this is too complicated to ever work - but ideas are always great!

Take your idea and wrap it in an easy to use GUI with clear instructions in each automatic email sent out.

Your technical solution is not unique or difficult, but you need to sell it.  

Still don't see your point... it's like "hey, don't use RIPEMD160, use MD5 instead" or something alike. There's no technical advantage whatsoever in your solution, to the least both solutions can achieve the same, being your more unnecessarily complicated, unless space is a constraint (which isn't much these days, with regular entry levels USB pens to be up to several Gb).

I believe you're more thinking of the informatics part than the human part of the question. The human part requires that:

1. An human solvable and reasonably easy way to pose the questions (your heirs might not be nerds).
2. No previous advice of the existence of the system by the heirs (they might get greedy... we never know).
3. Enforce a way for all parties to cooperate, no threshold of partial parties (a few of them may conspirate to leave others out of the scene).
4. Personalize your message; it's your TESTAMENT, not some random hashed characters.
5. Also you might want those you love to remind you one last time, instead of doing a simple cash grab. By posing questions of your co-existence, you can be sure that will happen.

But you're free to present your system. Like at RAR, ACE, 7Z, ZIP and other compressing algorithmics, you don't see one of them to come over to say the other must do as he does, do you?

Still your system of Xor'ing the hashes with the question doesn't pose much difference than AES'ing it. But that would provide a way they might solve the questions individually and not as a group, forwarding their hashes through lawyers or so, unlike the intended way of this solution that forces them to be together or take a very long time by proxying it through representatives.