WASHINGTON — The battle between the FBI and Apple over the locked phone of a deceased terrorist in the San Bernardino shootings has generated a lot of very important questions.
The legal positioning around this single phone is really a proxy for the long-running privacy-vs.-security battle between law enforcement and technology companies.
The outcome of this battle will have an impact on all of us in some form, but the real lesson to be learned from this public chess match has little to do with the ongoing privacy implications: If the FBI is having to go to these lengths to try to access the information on an iPhone, what might your family be faced with should you suddenly pass away?
It’s not a pleasant thing to ponder, but think about how many digital assets we all have these days.
Apple has spent an enormous amount of energy to secure our devices from unauthorized users, as this battle is clearly showing, but it could include your family after you pass. Apple does not store a phone’s lock code, and without it, accessing the information on a device becomes extremely complex, if not impossible.
Internet forums are filled with pleas for help from people after a loved one passes away and the family can’t get access important information on an iPhone; we routinely see this request in our data recovery labs as well.
In most cases, accessing the user’s iCloud account is the best way to get to most of the desired content, but many people have the auto-sync turned off for one reason or another. The most common reasons that we see are that the user exceeded the 5GB free storage limit and they elected to turn off iCloud backups rather than pay for more storage — or they never set it up in the first place.
Tech-savvy folks have a number of ways to avoid having to pay Apple for more storage, but for most people, paying the 99 cents per month for 50GBs of storage is a pretty good option.
One of the other ways to gain access to the contents of a locked iPhone is through a computer that was previously set up as a “trusted computer,” but most of the people asking us for help never did that either.
It turns out a large number of iPhone users never think about backing up what is on the phone, and simply use it as a stand-alone device.
Some think that providing Apple with a death certificate will help, but it won’t. They don’t store the lock code anywhere, and when it comes to the iCloud account, this clause in the Terms and Conditions spells out what will happen:
Section IV — D. No Right of Survivorship
Unless otherwise required by law, You agree that your Account is nontransferable 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.
Hopefully this perspective on the Apple-FBI battle gets you thinking a little more about all your digital assets as it pertains to a ‘succession plan’ for your family.
Ken Colburn is founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services. Ask any tech question on his Facebook page or on Twitter.
