Apple blocks widow from honouring husband's dying wish
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
>The company told Noble providing the password would contravene a U.S. law — the Electronic Communications Privacy Act — written back in 1986.
and further
>Citizens of countries that have laws specifically addressing digital assets — including those in the European Union — don't have the same problems. For those people, the terms and conditions of Apple services grant jurisdiction to "the laws and courts of your usual place of residence."
>She[other person] got court orders, first from Ontario and later from a California court. Apple and Bell complied with the Ontario order
FFS. Do people want "Big Tech" to just blow off law, or not? It seems few have any real principles about it, they just want what they want conveniently without considering any further repercussions. The problem here apparently is (A) THEY DIDN'T SAVE THEIR PASSWORDS, (B) outdated US law, and (C) non-existent Canadian law. With A being the most important, particularly given the importance and spread of E2EE, but B & C also important.
Digital is still new enough that we haven't had full generations under our belts yet, dealing with mortality and passing things on could be a lot better organized and smoother. But concerns about people getting into other people's stuff via hacks or social engineering, or mass surveillance, are extremely serious too. Just throwing around blame at the first convenient target is not helpful.
"When Noble contacted Apple in early 2017, she was told all she needed to do was prove she has the legal right to her husband's estate. She sent all the documents the company asked for, including his death certificate and the will designating her as executor.
"They called me back and said, no, that's not good enough — you have to have a court order [but] having to pay to put in a court order is a huge deal," she said.
Court orders can cost from about $2,000 to tens of thousands of dollars — depending on whether they're opposed."
EDIT: I see the downvotes. Isn't CBC state funded? They also had a highly misleading article headline about Amazon returns going to the trash not long ago [0]
But it really does showcase a growing problem that will only get worse especially as "digital natives" - whose lives are often lived out nearly entirely online - get older.
Seems to me the easiest, most effective way for Apple to handle this in the future would be for the iOS password manager to specify a "next of kin" to pass all credentials to at point of death.
She was/is the executor, she provided that proof and Apple said they need more.
https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/setti...
The more we do online, the more we need things like this. I already can designate family member or my fiancee as a beneficiary in most accounts that handle all my money, but there is much more to that I'd like them to be able to access if I suddenly died or became incapable of accessing it, or giving them access.
My dad is in his mid to late 60s and often will remind me what his passwords are based around for most of his online accounts in the event he can't get into them and my mom needs to. I think he tells her and my sister this too, but it'd be better to have successor roles for Email and other important accounts that don't have benefactors setup. More legal too, as technically if he passed and I accessed certain accounts it could cause legal issues if I ever did something like transfer funds or use his email to claim I was him for verification to another site.
Come to think of it, you would think getting someone declared "facebook dead" would be more common as a malicious act.
That reminds me that it might trigger since I’m not really using my Google accounts any more...
The issue of data and inheritance is a mess though. My father passed away suddenly and unexpectedly a month ago, and I basically had to hack into his electronic devices so I could get his writings out (he was a writer) for my older brother to have as memories - and in the process, even though I tried to respect his privacy as much as possible, I could have seen things he might not have wanted me to.
We don't even have photography albums or home videos like we used to, it's all behind passwords and biometric security now.
Incidentally, this is the same concern that archivists and historians have --- that our present era may be so concerned with secrecy that nothing remains of common life, and only "carefully curated" information survives.
That's a weird take, imo. They then must be absolutely thrilled when they find out about that thing called the internet. The carefully curated information with a billion likes is nothing more than a drop compared to the vast ocean of mundane nonsense that gets posted every day. Just because the carefully curated content gets the most attention doesn't mean that everything else is not out there. And never before has it been easier to find that stuff.
And I feel secrecy is most ofent forced upon the users. How many would have a password or even user name on their Windows or Mac machines unless forced?
> It would solve these sorts of problems for Canadians but, so far, only Saskatchewan has made it law.
> "Ultimately we need this nationwide," said estate lawyer Daniel Nelson.
> "This will force these giant tech companies to deal with the problem, because as it stands right now, good luck trying to get a hold of anyone in one of these companies who are almost always based in California."
> Only when Canada has that kind of "leverage," said Lown, will tech companies accommodate the needs of Canadians.
Sounds as though Canada is to blame here.
Reads to me like they just want the court order to cover themselves. Also puts the responsibility on the court to verify the documents.
These days private communications and stuff are placed under the stewardship of third parties under a false sense of privacy, and often preserved for eternity. I have emails dating all the way back to when I was 18 backed up on Google's servers, for instance, and private notes dating back almost as far. I'm not completely comfortable with the idea of giving my next of kin unfettered access to those.
Is there a solution to preserve your privacy post-mortem, other than not using non-E2E encrypted services in the first place, or erasing all unencrypted copies of private materials before leaving this world?
My wife may be the executor of my estate, such as it is, but all the passwords we've agreed she needs are already on a document in a fireproof safe. Plus she has the master password to my password manager.
Poor planning on their part is completely understandable, given the circumstances, but it doesn't mean Apple, or any other tech company, should just hand out or reset passwords just because.
People can disagree over whether the will should have been enough, but I think caution on any company's part is understandable.
Once this woman had been granted probate the courts have said that she is legally responsible for handling the estate. Apple said she needed a court order but they don't appear to recognise the authority of the court granting the probate document.
You mention "the courts," but in fact as soon as the Ontario courts got involved, Apple supplied the required information.
Anyway she has a way to get what she wants - a court order. I doubt that she would have great problems obtaining it. Apple are just covering their ass.
There are a lot of ways to address this, people just have to do it or face the inevitable consequences of not doing it.
If he wanted access to be given, he should have arranged that before. He had plenty of time to do that.
Apple might be technically in the right here but they deserve the PR smear.
I'm not sure how Canadian law works but in a lot of places wife or kids have guaranteed rights to the estate.
> His last words to me that night were 'You will have to write the book.'
The irony. If his last words had included his Apple password, there would be no issue.