Terms and conditions

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter a contract where you live. You may name a recipient only if you have a lawful reason to send that person the material and to use their email address for that purpose.

You choose the contents, the passphrase, the schedule, and the recipients. You are responsible for keeping the passphrase, the dashboard code, and the check-in link. The dashboard opens with that code, which is emailed to you. Your email address is not the code. Share the passphrase with a recipient yourself. CipherSwitch does not send the passphrase by email and cannot reset it. With the dashboard code you can delete the vault, or replace the sealed message and files. Deleting cannot be undone.

You confirm that you have the right to store and, if the vault triggers, to release the contents. Do not store anything you are not allowed to possess or to disclose.

A vault releases when its rules say it should: the check-in deadline and any grace period have passed, a scheduled release time has passed, or you force a dry-run trigger. Release depends on the service running, on email delivery, and on the recipient still having their unlock link and the passphrase. Those steps can fail. A missed check-in can also be a mistake. Build the schedule with that in mind.

The first vault for an email, with one recipient and no extras, is free. Extra recipients, files, a time-lock, and travel mode each have their own one-time fee. None of those comfort fees is more than $5. Another vault is a separate one-time fee only while that email still has an active vault. If the vault is deleted and none are left active, the next vault is free again, aside from any comfort fees. A comfort fee is charged again the next time you use that feature, including turning travel mode on later. It is not a subscription.

Card payments are processed by Stripe. CipherSwitch does not store the card number. A paid checkout can be used once. If the vault is not sealed after payment, that checkout can still be used for the same action until it is used. Except where the law requires a refund, the fee is for the attempt to use the feature and is not returned because a passphrase was lost or a check-in was missed.

You may not use CipherSwitch to:

• break the law, or help someone else break the law
• distribute malware, including a harmful file disguised as something important, or try to break into systems you do not control
• defraud, extort, stalk, or threaten anyone
• send material to a person who did not need to be involved, or misuse their email address
• interfere with the service, probe it without permission, or overload it

The operator may refuse, disable, or remove a vault that appears to break these terms. Hashed tokens and ciphertext can be deleted from the database the operator controls.

You must not use CipherSwitch to store, send, or release malware. That includes viruses, trojans, ransomware, spyware, and any other file or instruction meant to damage a device, steal access, or trick a recipient into running something harmful.

A vault is encrypted before it is uploaded, so CipherSwitch cannot open a file or scan it. You are responsible for every file you attach. The email a recipient receives says that a file was not scanned and may be unsafe. The operator may disable or delete a vault that appears to be used to distribute malware.

Nothing on this site is legal, tax, medical, financial, or estate advice. CipherSwitch does not tell you whether a vault is the right way to pass on information, and it does not replace a will or a lawyer.

CipherSwitch is provided as available. There is no promise that the site, the email provider, or a vault will work without interruption, on a particular schedule, or without error. To the extent the law allows, the operator disclaims implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

To the extent the law allows, the operator is not liable for lost messages, late or early release, a failed check-in, a lost passphrase, email that is not delivered, or decisions someone makes after reading a released vault. Nothing here limits liability that the law where you live does not allow to be limited, including liability for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence where that limit is prohibited.

You will cover the operator for claims, losses, and reasonable legal costs that come from the contents you store, the people you name, or your breach of these terms, except to the extent the claim is caused by the operator’s own fraud or wilful misconduct.

These terms can be updated by changing this page. The date at the top is the latest version. If you keep using the service after an update, the new terms apply to that later use. Vaults already sealed stay subject to the rules you accepted when you created them, plus any change the law requires.

The law of the place where the operator of this deployment is established applies, except where the law where you live gives you rights that cannot be waived. These terms do not remove those rights.