Apple unreasonable and callous to grieving widow

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Benjip

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#2034544 12-Jun-2018 16:15

mattwnz:

IANAL. This is possibly something that the government needs to look at this sort of with data protection and data privacy laws, as the data is stored and controlled by a private company. When a bank gives you an eftpos card, and you put a pin on it, you are told not to share that pin with anyone otherwise it could mean that you will not be covered for losses should anyone access your account. That includes your spouse. That mentality means that people also don't tend to share passwords either. ALthough I don't watch fair go these days, the issue I see is the ownership of the photos / data, and probate would show that that noone else owns them, or is claiming to own them, so I can see Apples point of view here. But it is quite a high cost to pay. Do companies like facebook require people to provide a probate document before they will close or deactivate a personal facebook account, or give someone else access to it?

Facebook has a feature called "Facebook Legacy Contacts", you can grant certain Facebook friends (eg. your spouse or close friend) the right to perform certain actions on your account once it's "Memorialised" (which requires either an immediate family member [logged in to Facebook and listed as an immediate family member on your account] to enact, or you need to provide paperwork to Facebook regarding the death). The Legacy Contact never gets access to your messages and other personal items though.

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tripp

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#2034547 12-Jun-2018 16:36

surfisup1000:

tripp:

I kind of agree with apple on this. If he wanted his wife etc to have access then he would have given her the password. What happens if there is something on that device that he never wanted her to ever see. Now that he has gone he can not explain anything that might be on that device.

I don't think you can conclude that the husband didn't want the wife to have access.

The husband just may not have expected to die or become incapacitated, or, he didn't know apples policies, or, he just didn't think about it. Any of these could be possible.

You might be right but we can't also conclude that he wanted her to have access either. Who know's there might be something on that device from a time before they were together or something else that happened in his life that she might not have a right to know. I think the take away from this is if you want someone to have access to your information/devices etc you need to have a talk about it now or put something in the your will on how to access that information.

Let's face it some people have great relationships others might have things they never want to come out and it might change the way people remember them.

steve98

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#2034685 12-Jun-2018 22:37

esawers:
I thought about this scenario a few weeks ago

Both my husband and I use Google Photos as a free backup to our iPhone photos, as well as the icloud service.

Under Google photos my library is shared with him, sure he could look through it now if he wanted to but in the morbid event of my death and possible iPhone demise hopefully the kids are left with the memories.

Funnily enough my wife and I were discussing the exact same thing at the weekend and I discovered that Google has options you can turn on that will either automatically delete OR allow a third party to take over your account if it remains inactive for a certain period of time (minimum six months). This means if and when you both pass your children can take over the account. It’s explained in this article: https://www.howtogeek.com/273488/how-to-set-your-google-account-to-automatically-delete-or-share-upon-your-death/

esawers

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#2034855 13-Jun-2018 10:00

steve98: Funnily enough my wife and I were discussing the exact same thing at the weekend and I discovered that Google has options you can turn on that will either automatically delete OR allow a third party to take over your account if it remains inactive for a certain period of time (minimum six months). This means if and when you both pass your children can take over the account. It’s explained in this article: https://www.howtogeek.com/273488/how-to-set-your-google-account-to-automatically-delete-or-share-upon-your-death/

Great feature, thanks!

1024kb

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#2034869 13-Jun-2018 10:28

We, as geeks, tend to perceive tech issues as having far greater importance than average peeps in the street do. In a recent consultation for a court case, I was amazed to learn that even high-powered professionals have no idea about Find My iPhone or how iCloud works. They're - understandably - fully conversant in their own area of expertise but blissfully unaware of iPhone features, they just pay the bill each month & upgrade every couple of years.

From this perspective, it's difficult to see a dying man suddenly offer up his iCloud information to his soon to be widow, they had far more pressing issues at hand. Just like she didn't know to ask, he didn't think to tell.

I've had a deceased estate recovery request like this before, except that wasn't involving photo recovery - they wanted to make the inherited devices usable again. In that case, a MacBook Air & iPhone came together. We attacked the problem on two fronts - one on the phone to Apple with the death certificate while I went after the hardware. MacBook login security is trivial to bypass so within a few minutes we were changing the iCloud password so we could wipe & restore the iPhone, then sign in as the deceased user before doing a legitimate factory reset, leaving the handset clean for the new owner.

Apple's response at the time was remarkably speedy, I hadn't finished downloading the new ipsw firmware file for restoring when they notified us that the devices had been freed from the iCloud account. Not that it mattered, we were almost finished anyway. Sounds like policies have changed at Apple, & I guess it comes back to who you're talking to as well (we went direct to California)

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CYaBro

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#2035919 13-Jun-2018 12:02

1024kb: We, as geeks, tend to perceive tech issues as having far greater importance than average peeps in the street do. In a recent consultation for a court case, I was amazed to learn that even high-powered professionals have no idea about Find My iPhone or how iCloud works. They're - understandably - fully conversant in their own area of expertise but blissfully unaware of iPhone features, they just pay the bill each month & upgrade every couple of years.

From this perspective, it's difficult to see a dying man suddenly offer up his iCloud information to his soon to be widow, they had far more pressing issues at hand. Just like she didn't know to ask, he didn't think to tell.

I've had a deceased estate recovery request like this before, except that wasn't involving photo recovery - they wanted to make the inherited devices usable again. In that case, a MacBook Air & iPhone came together. We attacked the problem on two fronts - one on the phone to Apple with the death certificate while I went after the hardware. MacBook login security is trivial to bypass so within a few minutes we were changing the iCloud password so we could wipe & restore the iPhone, then sign in as the deceased user before doing a legitimate factory reset, leaving the handset clean for the new owner.

Apple's response at the time was remarkably speedy, I hadn't finished downloading the new ipsw firmware file for restoring when they notified us that the devices had been freed from the iCloud account. Not that it mattered, we were almost finished anyway. Sounds like policies have changed at Apple, & I guess it comes back to who you're talking to as well (we went direct to California)

We've done that in the past too.

I think in this Fair Go case it wasn't about the Find My iPhone security lock though, it was about being able to bypass the passcode and get into the device, which Apple cannot do.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

RunningMan

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#2076872 21-Aug-2018 15:11

Presumably the same person, but it looks as if Apple have unlocked the phone for them.

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/nelson-woman-delighted-after-apple-unlocks-iphone-late-husband-giving-access-precious-family-memories-me-and-mahli-were-pretty-much-in-tears

tdgeek

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#2076874 21-Aug-2018 15:16

RunningMan:

Presumably the same person, but it looks as if Apple have unlocked the phone for them.

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/nelson-woman-delighted-after-apple-unlocks-iphone-late-husband-giving-access-precious-family-memories-me-and-mahli-were-pretty-much-in-tears

Good news. Yes, Apple is pretty secure, this secure. They just need a better process for this as it must not be that rare.

wellygary

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#2076908 21-Aug-2018 15:39

RunningMan:

Presumably the same person, but it looks as if Apple have unlocked the phone for them.

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/nelson-woman-delighted-after-apple-unlocks-iphone-late-husband-giving-access-precious-family-memories-me-and-mahli-were-pretty-much-in-tears

Although I am not actually sure that the report is correct,

AFAIK I Though it was impossible to open an iPhone without the password (brute force ways excluded) - Apple can't override that, the password is not stored off the device....

What they can do is reset the appleID, so they can get the documents from the cloud....

1024kb

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#2076942 21-Aug-2018 16:06

That’s correct. Apple remove the device from the iCloud account & allow a reset of the account password. The user then wipes the iDevice (because they still can’t get past the screen lock) & restores from the now-accessible iCloud account.

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