Questions about trust, security, and sustainability.
No. Encryption and decryption happen entirely in your computer's browser using your private key. IfGone servers only ever recieve already encrypted data that we cannot decrypt.
No. IfGone is not a legal document and has no legal standing as a will or testament. It is a secure digital vault for storing information your loved ones may need after you're gone. For those who already have a will, IfGone could be used to store a digital copy alongside a note indicating where the signed original is kept — your solicitor's office, a safe deposit box, or another secure location. For those without a will, IfGone provides a non-enforceable way to express wishes and document intentions, but this should not be confused with the legal protection a proper will provides. We strongly encourage everyone to create a formal will with a qualified legal professional.
IfGone charges a single one-time payment when you create your vault. A proportion of this payment is invested to provide an on-going cashflow that pays for the future costs of providing the service. This is similar to how a Pension fund invests your money to provide an on-going pension payment in retirement.
Each vault has 10 encrypted slots, and each slot holds up to 10 MB — 100 MB total across your vault. In plain text (how we suggest you store information), that means about 20 full length novels (like The Great Gatsby or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) per slot.
Plain text will almost always be readable. File formats change, the applications needed to open them get retired. Consider cassette tapes — 30 years ago they were everywhere, and today finding a player is nearly impossible. To ensure the long-term readbility of the information you store, we recomment plain text.
We don't like subscriptions, we think ownership and the long term planning that it enables is very important. IfGone is a private company without investor shareholders - this means we can enable the valuable service of digital legacy planning without having to focus on constantly increasing profits.
Firstly we want it to be clear that you don't need to purchase a metal plate to use your vault. But if you do, you have to upload your private key file to our servers as part of the purchase. We store this is an extra secure server, for as little time as possible, before we create your metal plate in-house. Doing the laser etching ourselves means we tightly control who ever gets access to that information, and we can ensure it gets destroyed as soon as we have created the metal plate.
IfGone uses the same cryptographic systems as banks use to protect your financial data. Today's phones and personal computers are easily powerful enough to do the complicated math required to encrypt your data before it is sent to IfGone for storage. The private key is the secret bit of information only you have access to, it is the thing that locks and unlocks your data. Your browser converts this key into a QR code in the PDF you can download when you make your vault - print it out and store it somewhere safe.
We cannot decrypt your data — not for you, not for us, not for anyone. We will politely inform the requestor of your data that we have no way to provide them with a decrypted version. Maybe we will refer them to this FAQ entry.