Good idea but its already been done multiple times:
http://www.forbes.co...omm05_1024email.html
http://www.futureme.org
http://www.emailthefuture.org
http://futuremail.bensinclair.com

Sites like futureme are similar but different.

1) The users secrets have a timer that MUST be reset.

2) It sends the secrets in multimedia format not only to individuals but to your MySpace / Facebook etc.. accounts.

3) It's designed for viral marketing via social networking.

4) The site itself reveals the latest secrets made public on the main page. A self funding news service. Who doesn't like to know?

5) It's not just an email. It's an entire site dedicated to it's mission.

6) It can be marketed that way. Not future mail. Secrets.

7) Simple to code. Low cost to maintain. Good ROI possibilities.

We've had similar ideas on CH. but I'm not conviced if there's a big need for it.
Tommy

Here's a similar idea from a couple of months ago. See the discussion of security there:
http://www.cambrianh...er/ideas-id/dJ57tTE/
I won't bother to cut-and-paste my comments here, but I think the entire discussion applies.

Why would someone confess a secret? They are suppose to be private. You describe a situation in which someone dies and the secrets are revealed (i.e. a convicted felon, who was Deepthroat, etc.). It is a very dramatic scenario but what kind of market is there for this sort of thing? I think there is a very small amount of people that this would appeal to. Plus confessing such things after one's death seems cowardly and would be very embarassing for friends and family members. It's got a buzz to it but I can't see this having mass appeal.

It's not about confessing a secret....It's more an insurance policy. Make a market. Make a must have novelty for some, the 'In Thing' for teens, a guarantee for others. Sometimes you don't know you need something until you see it.

That's my pitch anyway.

Thanks for the comments. I appreciate the feedback.
David

Do you have any response to the security issues raised in the comments for the identical idea I pointed out? You have a huge trust issue in making customers believe that their secrets won't be leaked early.

True. But lets not miss forest for the trees. Look at ISP's and other email hosts. You trust them with your passwords. They could easily read all your email anytime they want. Myspace admins could do anything they want.

I don't see security issues for this site as serious as something like the NSA or FBI. If your secret is that serious, put it in a bank lockbox and put the key in a sealed envelope with your last will and testament.

This is a novelty site than anything. But with money making potential from advertisers.

Plus it's so easy / inexpensive to create and admin. Good ROI.
David

Typo.. should say - "This is a novelty site more than anything"

More on security.....Your real name need not be known to anyone...not to the admins, not posted with your secrets. An anonymous login using Captcha to stop the bots.

That would keep any Thugs from trying to hack the system and find someones secrets. They wouldn't know who the someone is. No way of knowing if your enemy has any secrets on the site.

David

It might be fun for people who want to pretend that the information that they know is important. Kind of an ego boost for some wanna-be spy.

That could be the selling point. They think it is important, so it is. Sell a way to boost thier ego. If they will pay (advertisers), we will build it.

David

DavidDubree i dont see the need for such an site

David, security is certainly an issue. No, my ISP can't read all my email. Anything important is encrypted with public key crypto.

You're right that if you just want to build a novelty site, security isn't important. But how much use would a novelty site get? I can see a site like this being useful for things like storing my PGP passphrase so that my family could decrypt my harddrives if I died suddenly. Of course I already have key escrow solutions, but if you built this site well it could replace them. But in order for it to be useful for that kind of use and other non-trivial storage it needs two big things (1) not anonymous, because my info has to be tied to me so the right people can retrieve it, and (2) as secure as it can be using state of the art tools so it can be trusted.

From a business perspective, I think you need to consider how your user base would vary with security. If you build it with little or no security, it's quick to build but could you find users? If you build it to be secure, it will be hard to design and code it well but it will be more marketable to a wide audience, though still a marketing challenge since other solutions exist.

Micco,

You said - "(1) not anonymous, because my info has to be tied to me so the right people can retrieve it, "

...Yes the login is anonymous....but the timer will run out if you die and the info would then be automatically disseminated to whomever you configured to go to.

So, the security is in the anonymity. Simple. No need for public/private keys. Your secrets would be encrypted within the database of course.

David

If it's not public key, then the key to encrypt/decrypt is available on the webserver and it's not secure. You're pretending your webserver is absolutely secure. If you assume the webserver is secure, why bother to encrypt data in the database?

True. Is there such a thing as TrueCrypt for servers? Just need a password. Use Captcha and a wrong password lockout timer.

You could run a disk encryption tool on a server (like TrueCrypt or PGP Disk), but that really only protects the machine when it's turned off. Once you boot it up, you have to supply the key to decrypt the disk so something can run. That means even if your disk is TrueCrypt protected, once the server is running it's all in the clear if someone gets access to the server.

The way to protect data in a we server database is to use public key encryption. You put one key on the server so it can encrypt data written to the database and keep the other half of the key pair on some secure machine that will be used to access a copy of the data. That way if someone cracks the server or db, all they gain is the key used for encryption which can't be used for decryption. Obviously this can't be used to store data you want the website to be able to echo back to the user at some point, but for a scheme like this idea, you could have a set of public keys used to encrypt data in the database (e.g. one key pair per user) and when that users data should be revealed, it would be decrypted in the offline/secure machine and transfered as unencrypted data back to the webserver for display.

You still have a trust issue because people have to trust you with their secrets (since you have all the keys), but at least they don't have to worry (as much) about crackers. This line of discussion was one of the main topics on that other idea I linked to.

OK. I understand now. I'll think on it.

Micco is very right.

I think that the broader challenge here is that
"If it is worth protecting, it is worth stealing."

In other words as the value of what is secret increases the resources devoted to breaking into your system will increase. If this idea would be successful and you had a large number of customers with valuable/damaging/important secrets then attacks would increase in intensity and resources.

If you are not going to make this a trivia/ ego system. Then you have to consider the alternative. The alternative is that your systems holds secrets that State level actors are willing to expend their vast resources to overcome your system. That means legal action, military action against your facility, billion dollar budgets, the best in government and criminal minds cracking your system.

If your system can't handle all that, then don't waste your time.

Seems that this would be most helpful to store 'other' people's secrets rather than your own. Blackmail.com?

There's probably a tiny but profitable market for this, but legality would be an issue... Then again if somebody had such an urgent need for this kind of 'insurance' they could easily build the solution themselves, or hire somebody to.

So in the end, the only really viable market is as David suggested, a novelty site. It would be a pretty neat gimmick for some Ad campaigns though.

cool but it doesn't have instant gratification...wouldn't work for Americans

I can't quite reconcile the serious side of a site designed to release sensitive information in the event of my murder or otherwise untimely death with your description of it as a 'novelty' site that won't be trusted with anything critical. I can think of uses for a site that makes information public if I don't cancel within a certain time, but the marketing and positioning of the product needs work.

How do you make money?

Although this would be cool, not many people would care. No one of any importance would ever use this (in my opinion) so no good secrets would ever come out from this service.

I think the way to make money is simple. The subscription renewal is the indication you're not dead. If you don't renew, the site releases your secrets. If I'd used the site to escrow my PGP key or something I wanted available after my death, I'd certainly pay the fee to keep it secret.

Obviously that was a joke, any good service would let you cancel and delete without revealing the data. But people are already willing to pay small monthly/yearly subscription fees for both physical lockboxes and electronic escrow services, so the business model is there. The problem is differentiating yourself from all the similar solutions.

DavidDubree, I do like this concept, despite its similarity to earlier submissions. I think it will be a very maintenance heavy site due to people being incapacitated, but not dead, and their secrets getting published. So you'll probably get angry calls and stuff from time to time. Also, your most likely customers will be what I affectionately refer to as "the crazies".

But what-the-hey, it sounds neat to me.

I think it could appeal to the WE generation. Make it viral through the big social nets. Advertising the right way is how it gets differentiated from the rest.

Another angle to add to this is provide a DeadManWalking icon for MySpace, Facebook, etc.. that is a link to allow people to click and be taken to a page where you can enter secrets that you want only that person to know when the time expires. a quick and easy way to future your friends (or enemies) that you find on the social nets.

Of course the icon can be animated so that if someone has left you a secret, the icon animates to show that. Something weird like a deadman stick figure.... The more it moves, the more secrets have been futured to you. When the timer expires on a secret that has been futured to you, the icon can alert you that a secret is waiting to be seen.

The same icon can also alert you when your secret timer is about to run out so you can login and reset the timer.

There are a lot of ways to make it an in thing for the social net generation.