How It Works
How The Vault Works
Time Machine Vault (TMV) holds a message until it is needed. Four steps take it from your hands to theirs.
Sign up with your email address and confirm it with the code we send. Two-step sign-in is yours to turn on later.
Choose who it is for and write what you have always meant to say. Prompts are there if you want them.
Choose someone you trust. If your vault goes quiet, we ask them one question: has this person died. They never see what you wrote, or who it is for.
Your capsule is encrypted and sealed. Once your death is confirmed, it is delivered privately to your recipient.
Your subscription is how we know you are still here. You are never asked to visit a website to prove it. If a payment stops, we write to you five times over two months. Settling it ends the matter.
If every reminder goes unanswered, we write to your guardian three months after the payment stopped and ask one question: has this person died. They are never told what you wrote, how much there is, or who it is for.
Recipients get a private link and read the message in the TMV Recipient Portal, never in the body of an email. We write to them weekly for a month, then monthly for a year, and stop the moment it is read.
A guardian can die too, or never reply. If the one you named never accepts, we tell you so you can name somebody else. If nobody ever answers, the vault is released a year after the payments stopped.
Questions people ask first
- What is Time Machine Vault?
- Time Machine Vault (TMV) is a service that holds a written or recorded message until after you die, then delivers it to the person you named. You write it now. We keep it sealed and encrypted, and release it only once your death is confirmed.
- How does TMV know I have died?
- Through your subscription and your guardian. If payments stop and five reminders over two months go unanswered, we ask the guardian you named one question: has this person died. If they confirm, delivery begins. If nobody answers for a year, the vault is released anyway.
- What does a guardian see?
- Nothing of what you wrote. A guardian is never told what a message says, how many there are, or who they are for. They are asked one question, once, and only after we have been unable to reach you for three months.
- Can I change a message after sealing it?
- No. Sealing is final, which is what makes a sealed capsule a promise rather than a draft. You can delete a sealed capsule and write a new one in its place. A deleted capsule is kept for thirty days in case the deletion was a mistake, then destroyed for good.
- Is my message encrypted?
- Yes. Every capsule is encrypted before it is stored, under its own key, held in a separate key service. TMV holds those keys so that a message can be delivered years later to someone who was never given a password. A stolen database or backup yields nothing readable.
- What does it cost?
- The Messenger plan is $1 a month for one capsule. The Vault plan is $12 a year for up to five sealed capsules and multiple recipients. Larger archives are priced on enquiry. Guardians and recipients never pay anything.
- How does the recipient get the message?
- By a private link to the TMV Recipient Portal, never in the body of an email. We write to them weekly for a month and then monthly for a year, and stop the moment the message is opened.
Ready to begin?
Your first message takes an evening. It will wait as long as it needs to.
Create Your Vault