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Show HN: I made an emergency page for my family
I have a bad memory and can't memorize some important numbers, so I created this project.
I've always been concerned about being without my phone (getting robbed - which is common in Brazil - running out of battery, having it break, etc.), so I decided to create a page that sends SMS messages (LLM-summarized) and emails with more detailed information such as geolocation, IP address, and the full message.
It’s a simple page that allows sending one or more messages, with recipients being myself and other people - for example, in case I or they need help or need to communicate something important.
The source code is available at https://github.com/skhaz/dokku/tree/main/apps/help https://github.com/skhaz/dokku/tree/main/apps/help
- andrewstuart 5mo agoWhy did it ask my location.
- cbracketdash 5mo agoWhy is it more likely you'll have internet access when you don't have a phone? If you happen to find a computer, what's insufficient about writing an email?
- mococa 5mo agoMy wife doesn't check email frequently, so SMS (or even better, WhatsApp) would be more reliable. Maybe an alternative is to store the WhatsApp contact information of people who could help behind a password. Then, if I need help, I can ask to borrow someone's phone on the street. If they don't have WhatsApp, I can just make a regular phone call instead.
- fn-mote 5mo ago> If they don't have WhatsApp Is this really likely? I would guess only 70 year olds don't have WhatsApp. Seems more likely you forget the impoprtant phone numbers because you never enter them manually.
- x187463 5mo agoWith iMessage, Discord, and Signal, I can't imagine a use case for me or anyone I know to use WhatsApp.
- nerdsniper 5mo agoThe vast majority of the world defaults to whatsapp. But yes, other than convention, any of these could be equivalent. I don’t see why you would care for Discord over whatsapp except that it’s what you happen to use already.
- sheept 5mo agoWhatsApp is not universally used. Line, WeChat, and KakaoTalk are more common in East Asia
- malfist 5mo agoNobody in my friend group has a WhatsApp and I'm a millennial.
- NDlurker 5mo agoIn the US, the only people I know who use WhatsApp are immigrants who use it to talk to friends and family back home.
- appreciatorBus 5mo agolol not 70, no Whatsapp.
- ianburrell 5mo agoWhy hide emergency contact info? Put it in Emergency group on everyone's phone. The goal should be to send a single message with nature of emergency, what you need from them, and what they do like call police I could see a private reference page with important info. Including checklist for various scenarios. That's what I thought you did. Then print out a copy and put in binder somewhere at home.
- SoftTalker 5mo agoHow will you log into your email from a strange computer without your phone. Gmail has required 2-factor auth for a long time.
- 306bobby 5mo agoI get your point, but believe it or not there's more email services than just Gmail
- embedding-shape 5mo ago[dead]
- prepend 5mo agoReally, because I’ve been working to move off gmail for 5 years and it’s slim pickings. I’ve tried fastmail, protonmail, outlook and they all suck. Gmail is probably the only google account I still use.
- SoftTalker 5mo agoI like fastmail but any provider worth using is going to have 2FA mandatory so that will be an issue regardless. Gmail was just a (popular) example.
- LasEspuelas 5mo agoYou have to set up those backup codes and keep them in your wallet or somewhere independent of your phone and in your person at all times.
- zamadatix 5mo agoBefore MFA was mandated on every service this was an easy problem to solve. Now when you lose your phone while out and about you lose your ability to log in to even Dave's Speed Cow Milker's Enthusiast Forum unless you're at home with another computer already logged in to various things.
- petesergeant 5mo agoLearning my 1Password recovery key took quite a while, but should allow me to do a cold reboot of my digital life.
- et-al 5mo agoYubikeys could be cheaper. In addition to the two I have, I bought two more to store offsite with friends and family for redundancy (with access to my password manager + important email accounts).
- OlivOnTech 5mo agoCheaper than learning a recovery key? Yubikey redundancy is a great idea though
- xtiansimon 5mo agoWith a usb stick form factor I would think Yubikey would be doing more to convince consumers a yubikey will not fail like a usb stick (randomly and from disuse).
- hod6654 5mo agoIt's something that you never use on a daily basis. Very easily forgotten...
- waterproof 5mo agoThe QR code that you use to transfer TOTP secrets to a new phone, is static. It never changes (unless you add a new service) and it requires no verification. Do with that information what you will.
- mrdw 5mo ago"LLM-summarized" lmao
- mococa 5mo agoDo you know another way to fit a 3000 long message into a 160ish SMS?
- philipwhiuk 5mo agoWhy 3000 ? Set a character limit. If the detail is important they can just send 2.. or 10.
- ForHackernews 5mo agowrite a shorter emergency message? "I was in a car accident, come to general hospital downtown"
- TZubiri 5mo agoOk I understand the usecase now. I would have used two textboxes, Title and description, but this works as well.
- MSFT_Edging 5mo ago19 SMS messages. Does anyone still pay per text?
- flexagoon 5mo ago> Does anyone still pay per text? It makes much more sense outside the US than to pay for a text bundle. My phone plan includes 0 SMS messages, and I don't know what was the last time when I've had to send one was. It's only useful when someone doesn't have internet, which only happens once every few months at most.
- account42 5mo agoYou are generalizing quite a bit here, not everywhere "outside the US" is the same. Here almost all phone plans that aren't data only come with unlimited SMS - and we never paid for receiving them anyway.
- sixhobbits 5mo agoI did something similar, just a photo of handwritten phone mumbers and an easy to remember URL that's not indexed. Anyone will hopefully lend you a phone if you're in a pinch but I realized that I don't know very numbers to actually call and it's kinda weird to start using email/Whatsapp whatever on a strangers phone compared to asking to visit one site and make one call
- FractalParadigm 5mo ago> Anyone will hopefully lend you a phone if you're in a pinch I honestly wouldn't count on it, at least not where I'm from, not anymore anyways. IME, having been in that situation (and knowing the numbers I need to call) it's rare for someone to let a stranger use their personal device for something as mundane as a phone call due to risk of theft, scams, or other criminal behaviour, not just on the part of the person borrowing the phone, but the person on the other end being contacted from an unknown number. While the chances of something like that realistically happening are incredibly low, it's a surprisingly easy social engineering method that's got people wary of trusting others to handle effectively their entire life in one device. A lot of businesses don't even let customers make personal phone calls from their landline for the same reason.
- sixhobbits 5mo agoYeah with AI voice cloning I'd definitely be default suspicious now but at this stage I know close friends and relatives well enough to be able to ask one question to establish identity
- NewEntryHN 5mo agoHmm I'm not sure why in an emergency situation accessing a webpage would be easier than making a phone call.
- mococa 5mo agoThe problem is to remember numbers.
- tracker1 5mo agoYou remember the URL but not a phone number.
- QuercusMax 5mo ago...then put the phone number at the URL
- tracker1 5mo agoExactly the point in the conversation... in this case it's a webform to notify directly.. I think a simple password prompt and including an actual list of emergency contacts would be prudent.
- comrade1234 5mo agoDid you get my request for help?
- mococa 5mo agoI got ~300 requests :) So far...
- ventana 5mo agoI would probably suggest switching the link to the GitHub source code and listing the actual page URL in the description; otherwise, I click the link in the article and get a location sharing request and a Send button; after a few seconds I matched that with the title, but I still had my WTF moment.
- autoexec 5mo agoThis isn't a terrible idea, but I'd password protect it and share the password with the people you want to be able to contact you. That'll help avoid spam/scams. "I'm your family member in trouble please send money now to X immediately no time to explain further" is a very common scam and a page like this would make it very easy.
- ahmedfromtunis 5mo agoI built life-link almost a year ago for the same purpose: https://github.com/ahmedsaoudi/life_link https://github.com/ahmedsaoudi/life_link I even created a generator so people can configure it with their Telegram/Pushover settings and have it generate a static app easy to host on Netlify or Clouflare Pages/Workers.
- hod6654 5mo agoThis is so simple and yet so useful!
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- philipwhiuk 5mo agoI... I would not trust my emergency page to an LLM.
- mococa 5mo agoThe LLM is just to make the message short for the SMS. The entire message is sent by mail without any AI.
- QuercusMax 5mo agoThat makes no sense. Why don't you just set a char-limit on the input and reject anything that's too long?
- mococa 5mo agoIf I trim I may lost important context. I understand the concern here.
- QuercusMax 5mo agoWho said anything about trimming? Make your text box only hold as much data as you can transmit. Or send two messages if you need to. Do you think someone is going to paste a novel in there or something? This is a VERY stupid reason to use an LLM.
- tracker1 5mo agoHave two inputs a summary and a longer text field... kind of like an email subject. Then limit the text input to like 100 chars, giving another 60 for general "... continued in email to you@..." Send the summary as the subject, and the full text in the email. easy peasy. I'd also add a simple text auth/password prompt as well as list the contacts and their respective email and phone numbers too, so you can call easier.
- overfits 5mo ago[dead]
- ge96 5mo agoWhen I was really bad at speeding all the time I had this fear I'd go to jail and my cat would die alone in my apt. So I started working on my own dead man switch, I actually have not finished it but I at least bought him like a self-feeding thing that would last a month or more and he unfortunately drinks out of the toilet too so I leave the top cover off. I've recently stopped or working on stopping the triple digits driving. The topic at hand this would be a Twilio thing sending a message like "so and so might be in jail take care of the cat" which is messed up/funny but I do tell them in advance can you be on this list. But at least this phase of my life is over/I have something to look forward to/behave for.
- mikeocool 5mo agoNot sure jail is the outcome you need to be worrying about.
- blitzar 5mo agoThe right thing to do is to use your one call to phone your cat and make sure they are ok - or take them with you when you drive.
- ge96 5mo agoYeah I hope I don't find out but the one time I was arrested (too drunk at a bar) I was released ROR or something no bond. That was a scary experience like you just disappear.
- rsyring 5mo agoThe right thing to do is stop speeding like that. Needlessly endangering others. It's good you are trying to stop. To help you continue in that effort... Check out HPDE events to get your speed fix and keep it off public roads. I've ran with Chin Track Days and 10/10ths and can recommend both orgs (USA based because that's what I know).
- ge96 5mo agoI am past it but unless it's Nurburging track doesn't interest me although I am trying to buy a track car eg. Lotus Exige but I have time I don't do the squeeze benz shit, if it's day time I see a gap in traffic that's when I floor it but yeah, even with a radar detector a lot of cops/troopers don't use their radar so not even helpful... and the tickets which I was dumb and paid... like I said I'm done with it as I want to stay out of jail It's almost a curse discovering fast cars the thrill of the acceleration... I used to drive like mundane just part of life... and with the RD now I'm just on edge looking for the cops so yeah... I'm glad not speeding now
- hk1337 5mo agoI was trying to figure out if the bad gateway page was the page or an error
- mococa 5mo agoI was deploying a new version. For some reason sometimes I do not get zero down deployments with Dokku, probably missing the healthcheck.
- josegonzalez 5mo agoDokku maintainer here. Happy to help you debug why this is happening on our discord/slack. Links here: https://dokku.com/docs/getting-started/where-to-get-help/ https://dokku.com/docs/getting-started/where-to-get-help/
- mococa 5mo agoI will confirm if it is not a bug on my code first, thank you very much!
- Diti 5mo agoI thought the unlabeled `<textarea>` was part of the prominent Cloudflare captcha that’s on the page. I sent intense swearing as a result. I’m sorry. But your UI could be made slightly better (by adding a label)!
- stanleydupreez 5mo ago[flagged]
- sailfast 5mo agoWhy did you let me send you a message? That’s what came up when I hit this page.
- qurren 5mo agoI don't get it. Is this for your family to message you in emergency (e.g. they lose their phones) without needing credentials to their 2FA-infested apps of sorts that they're locked out of? Are you not getting a ton of spam from this form being open to public? I've had similar ideas but I'd probably make it something easy to remember like myname.com/message and it quizzes the user or various things that only my family would know. Things like the color of the bedsheets, which specific IKEA kallax square the cat loves to hang out in, the location in the kitchen where the rice is stored
- NewsaHackO 5mo agoYeah, I hope this is just a demo that he is showing. You usually are fine if you have a reverseDNS domain name that you don't advertise + CF, but he is now going to get spammed by genuine human traffic.
- apwheele 5mo agoI have a contact page on my business website. I get about 2 spam messages a day. So far I have not taken the effort to better filter them. It is a nice check to make sure the site is still working at the moment given the low volume I get. I should try to AI inject them though at this point with something silly, like I am more likely to respond if you email as a limerick.
- brandonwindson 5mo ago[dead]
- rodolphoarruda 5mo agoI'm also from Brazil and share the same fears. I built a family note taking app which has an internal contact form for the same purpose. One can use it to contact family members in situations of having the phone lost/robbed. Now I'm looking forward to implementing an ephemeral web conference room via API so we could have emergency voice chat. I tried with Jitsi, but it didn't work for me.
- reboot81 5mo agoYoure not alone with the problem: if device lost -> difficult to reach family No matter what solution you choose you will need to remember something. I have two family members who always answer, so their phone numbers are the only two I know. By dialing them manually now and then I make sure my memory is working. In the age of AI/voice generators I’ve also told them how I will identify myself. So if being mugged in Kiwiland, and they get a call where I ask them to transfer money they can do so knowing it would only be me making that request as I told them the secret phrase: ”yes, it was me who tipped over the Christmas tree”. Ofcourse not that, but something none of the inner family will ever forget.
- turtlebits 5mo agoA "simple page" but it needs multiple SaaS API keys (Openrouter, Resend, Textbelt) AND requires Temporal? I can't see how this will last/be reliable for an extended period of time. Also, how do you prevent spam?
- dstroot 5mo agoIn a wider disaster, such as a fire, earthquake, tornado or hurricane both companies and families want to contact employees or loved ones to make sure that they are OK. Unfortunately, land networks, Internet, links and mobile networks may be compromised by the emergency further, people may be caught away from home. Their laptop or mobile device might run out of power. I thought a solution might be some type of “check-in” service - especially for employees. Are you OK? How can we reach you? Are you available for work? Do you need assistance? Etc. Things like slack, teams, etc. can fit the bill so it was not really monetizable.
- BaudouinVH 5mo agoOr maybe ping their equipment and react in case the ping stops responding on all the devices ?
- m0nit0r 5mo agoI really like the idea of trying to solve an existing problem. You forget your phone but how do you access a webpage in an emergency? If this works for you and your personal use case, then everything is fine. But I see a lot of hurdles along the way here. I would rather think of something like: If my phone hasen't been moved over an X amount of time (locations based or accelerometer) the phone drops a note to predfined receipients with "My phone hasen't moved in 60 minutes, maybe I forgot it somewhere". You can send a location point, but that is just where the phone is. At least it would solve the point where you have to do something manually.
- throawayonthe 5mo agothis seems very streamlined and i don't think it would be that hard to find someone to lend you their phone for like 30 seconds (or ask them to type a message while they hold their own phone obviously. i once was approached and asked to send an email to a relative because they were locked out and without their phone)
- candizdar 5mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- snazarov92 5mo agoI get this error while visiting the site Sorry, you have been blocked You are unable to access delduca.org I'm from Germany
- altairprime 5mo agoSame error, United States. Oh well!
- adrianwaj 5mo agoAnother idea would be to have a chatroom (eg Kraa) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872083 - and preload a bunch of people into it, and have each one notified when someone posts into it (that feature does not exist.) The 'leaf' could be called "Panic." The issue is verification - a password seems the most obvious. Something you can remember once your phone is gone. The other issue from reading comments below - you need to be able to walk up to someone and tell them, "I've lost my phone, do you think I can use your phone briefly." Alternatively, you could walk into a box-store (or library) and use one of their PCs. Also, a way to get transport quickly would be important - perhaps that is the first thing you do when on another computer.
- holidayfriends 5mo agomaybe you can try this one with your family ? Alive partners (from IOS or Android)
- ARMack 5mo agoHey, I think the premise is good, being able to let someone know quickly you're without your phone. like another user has already pointed out, lastpass and 1password etc are worth it to ensure you can get into all of your digital sites and assets. And it should be behind authentication, hope you weren't spammed too much.
- peter-m80 5mo ago404