Terms of Use

Afterwyrd is a place to write down what the people you leave behind will need to know, and to have some of it reach them at a time you choose. You keep an encrypted binder; you decide who receives what, and when.

You must be at least 18 and able to enter into a contract. You are responsible for everything done through your account.

It is not a lawyer, and a binder is not a will. Nothing you store here is a legal instrument. A will, a power of attorney, a trust or an advance directive must be made the way the law where you live requires — usually in writing, signed, and witnessed. Putting a copy of your wishes in Afterwyrd does not make them legally effective, and does not replace or override a document that is.

It is not financial, tax, medical or legal advice. It is not a bank, a vault, a custodian of assets, or an executor. It does not act on your behalf.

Your binder is encrypted on your device before it reaches us. We hold ciphertext we cannot read. That is the point of the design, and it has a consequence you need to accept before you begin:

If you lose your password and your Secret Key, your binder cannot be recovered — by you, by us, or by anyone. There is no reset, no support process, and no back door. We are not able to help, however much we would like to. Keep your Emergency Kit somewhere safe and somewhere findable.

You are responsible for keeping your credentials secure and for who you choose to share with. Anyone you give access to can read what you shared with them.

Afterwyrd can release items to people you name — on a date, or after a period during which you have not responded to us. These mechanisms depend on timers, on email reaching people, and on other things outside our control.

We do not guarantee that any item will be released, that it will be released on time, or that it will not be released early. A release may fail, arrive late, or reach someone at a moment you did not intend. Afterwyrd is not a substitute for telling the people who matter where things are and what you want.

We do not verify deaths. Where the service responds to a report or to silence, it is acting on a signal, not on a fact we have confirmed.

We take care with your data, and we still cannot promise it will always be there. Faults, outages, mistakes, third-party failures and the ordinary hazards of software can all cause loss or corruption, and in beta that risk is higher than it will be later.

Keep your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose. You can export your binder at any time from Settings. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for lost, corrupted or unavailable data, or for anything that follows from it.

We design so that a breach of our systems exposes ciphertext rather than your contents, and we have described how that works on our security page. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for unauthorised access to or disclosure of your data, whether caused by a fault in the service, by a third party, by your own devices or credentials, or by someone you shared with. If we become aware of a breach affecting you, we will tell you, and we will tell you what we actually know.

We record a limited set of actions so we can see where Afterwyrd is confusing or broken: pages opened, the sign-up or login form opened, accounts created, signing in, unlocking a binder, and adding, editing, deleting or sharing an item — together with plain facts about those actions, such as which category an item was filed under and how many people it was shared with. We also keep three running totals for your account: how many items it holds, how many of those are shared, and how many people you have named. We use a third-party analytics service to collect and read this.

What we never send, and by design cannot: the contents of your binder. No titles, no notes, no files or their names, and no names, email addresses or relationships of the people you add. These are recorded against a random account number that is meaningless outside our own systems; your email address is not part of it. There is no session recording, and nothing captures your clicks, your typing or the addresses of pages you visit automatically — only the specific actions listed above. What is collected is described in full on our security page.

This measurement is part of the service rather than something you switch off, and using Afterwyrd means accepting it. If that is not acceptable to you, the remedy is to close your account, which section 13 describes.

Do not use Afterwyrd to store or share anything unlawful, to harm or harass anyone, to attack the service or other users, or to attempt to access a binder that is not yours. We may suspend or close an account that does.

We may add, alter or remove features, and we may suspend or discontinue the service. Where we discontinue it, we will give you reasonable notice and an opportunity to export your binder, except where circumstances make that impossible.

Paid plans, where offered, are governed by the terms shown at the time of purchase.

Afterwyrd is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, accuracy, or uninterrupted or error-free operation, to the fullest extent the law allows.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Afterwyrd and the people who work on it are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, nor for loss of data, profits, goodwill or opportunity, arising from your use of or inability to use the service.

Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars.

Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded — including, in many places, liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Afterwyrd and the people who work on it from claims, losses and costs arising from your use of the service, from anything you store or share through it, or from your breach of these terms.

You may close your account at any time. Closing it deletes your binder, and because we cannot read it we cannot restore it afterwards. Export anything you want to keep first.

We may update these terms. Where a change materially affects your rights, we will tell you before it takes effect. Continuing to use Afterwyrd after that means you accept the updated terms.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Hampshire, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the courts located there have exclusive jurisdiction — except where the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim locally, which these terms do not take away.

Questions about these terms can go to hello@afterwyrd.com.