CHRONOS: Digital Legacy Management Using a Dead Man’s Switch Mechanism

Abstract

The increasing dependence on digital platforms has resulted in individuals accumulating extensive digital assets such as cloud data, emails, online identities, financial credentials, and private communications. After death or prolonged inactivity, the absence of structured digital legacy mechanisms exposes these assets to misuse, privacy violations, and permanent loss. Existing solutions are fragmented, manual, and platform-specific, offering limited automation and control. Chronos is a secure digital legacy management system that applies a Dead Man’s Switch mechanism to automatically execute user-defined actions upon inactivity. In addition to basic legacy handling, the proposed sys- tem introduces centralized control, cryptographic security, and automated enforcement of digital inheritance policies. Chronos continuously monitors user activity using authenticated signals and inactivity thresholds while ensuring that sensitive data remains encrypted throughout its lifecycle. The system sup- ports multiple execution actions including secure data transfer, conditional access provisioning, and irreversible data deletion. This paper presents a comprehensive design and evaluation of Chronos, covering system motivation, architecture, methodology, implementation, and performance analysis. Experimental results demonstrate improved reliability, reduced human intervention, and enhanced privacy preservation when compared with tra- ditional manual approaches. The proposed solution contributes toward ethical digital estate planning and establishes a scalable foundation for future digital legacy management systems.

Keywords