This morbid chain of thought started when I came across this Teller Report post. An excerpt:
The Münster district court has ordered Apple to grant the heirs of a deceased iCloud user access to its data. The relatives hope for information about the circumstances of death.
And:
According to the Bielefeld law firm Brandi, who represented the heirs in court, the father died during a trip abroad. Apple has rejected the desire of relatives to gain access to the data stored in the iCloud out of court.
The company did not want to comment on the case. Experts pointed out, however, that the iPhone group in the past in similar cases, the heirs have made possible access to iCloud data of the deceased even without trial. The submission of a certificate of inheritance was sufficient. In other cases, it needed a court order.
I suspect some of the details have been lost in translation. So I did a bit of digging.
From the official Apple iCloud terms of service page:
No Right of Survivorship
Unless otherwise required by law, You agree that your Account is non-transferable and that any rights to your Apple ID or Content within your Account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate your Account may be terminated and all Content within your Account deleted.
So there it is. Pretty clear. If you die, Apple’s policy is to delete your account. Seems to me, there should be a way to assign an heir, perhaps transfer all the files to the heir’s account. They could even limit heirs to family members in a family plan.
Not crazy about a policy that forces a grieving family to have to go to court to access their loved ones photos, etc.
So my family uses 1Password for Families.
We have the shared vault for all of us of course that has things like netflix, HBO now etc.
But my wife and I have a vault for just two of us for financial accounts like ETrade, 401K, IRAs, Pensions and critical accounts like Apple IDs as well.
If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, at least I know that my wife would not have to deal with the pain and frustration of accessing the digital world that I had all the accounts to.
I should also mention that my master password for 1Password is on a piece of paper in our safety deposit box – so if something were to happen to both my wife and I – the kids would be able to get access as well once they had access to our safety deposit box.
The onus is on each of us to get this ‘affair’ in order before catastrophe. Give your loved ones access to your login credentials upon death with some instrument like a Will, if you feel that’s proper.
It’s curious, assuming you don’t notify Apple of ones death, how long will the account remain active – in perpetuity or is there a 100 year limit or something?
Really this is yet another reason why you should not trust any cloud as the sole source for your precious data, but most especially your photos. Particular photos since few other things in life are so personal and so long-lived in value. Can you imagine losing all the photos of your kids growing up? Of your wedding? A local copy you control is essential, as are good backups stored offsite.
Not crazy about a policy that forces a grieving family to have to go to court to access their loved ones photos, etc.
That assumes the account is one the loved one would/does want the family to have access to.
As others said, you address this by taking appropriate password/key measures while you are alive, and possibly also keep “stuff for family if I die” in some place they can all access even while you’re alive.
Interesting. One problem of course is that when you die, your property passes by operation of law. Should Apple then delete these copyrighted works, they are then potentially destroying someone else’s property.
Not sure this has been well thought out.
See also:
https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/terms-and-conditions
It seems that the person who died was not interested in allowing access to their data, otherwise someone in the family would already have appropriate information. Interesting how some families feel the need to litigate. Anyone (my partner) who should/needs access to my account already has it.
I wondered about this myself. The article makes it sound like Apple will delete the account if they are provided with a death certificate, but who is going to go out of their way to do this — especially since in most cases the desired outcome is to keep the contents of the account? Surely the government or some other party is not going around notifying Apple of people’s deaths, so it sounds like this is just a clause for people who actually want their family member’s account to be deleted, and not a “as soon as you die we’re deleting it” kind of thing.
Also, how does the “No Right of Survivorship” clause work when it comes to things like family sharing?
+1 to the family 1Password.
I would certainly welcome a solution from Apple on this one. Some process that allows me to get copies of that media. Maybe facial recognition could be used to verify “I’m that guy in the picture” and thus possibly have a legitimate claim on that photo.
last i checked, Apple doesn’t automatically get a copy of everyone’s death certificate with their apple ID email attached. so they won’t know that you are dead unless someone tells them. if you want someone to have your info you make arrangements to tell them the log in. otherwise they can kick rocks.
A lot of the contents are encrypted anyway. I think you’ll get access to email, but probably not much else.