The Dean Man Switch is where a mechanism is in place to perform an action if a particular party become incapacitated or dies. This became important in the early days of railway travel as it is not a good thing for a train to be going down the track with no one at the controls.

The software version is typically where the switch owner must periodically contact the switch to postpone an action. The action may be some form of notifying people of the event, sending data to those people, or making data publically available on a large scale.

This service is available from some organizations, but with ShofarNexus it become possible to be fully distributed and the existence of the switch is only known by the owner.

There are many uses for this. For example a way to make sure things like bank account numbers, passwords, or the location of the treasure in the backyard can be sent to family or friends if a person dies.

There is also the more serious idea of letting a threatening party know that you have information that will be distributed if something happens to you.

With ShofarNexus distributed data storage technology, there can be a small amount of data or terabytes that there is no indication it exists. The hosting parties do not know that they have any part of the data. The switch is simply a capability built into a ShofarPortfolio, so there is nothing that stands out. Communications to the switch is via the Matry protocol, so there is no evidence that the communications takes place. Since the switch is in a ShofarPortfolio it can be mirrored in many locations so that the loss of one does not stop the switch.

When activated the switch would not have the data locally, but rather the keys to gather the data from around the web. It could then package it for shipment via email, make it public on one or more websites, provide the keys for others to gather the data, or numerous other options.

The objective is not a solution for all, but a fighting chance for some.