Everyone Should Ensure That Their Digital Legacy Can Be Accessed Easily By Those You Trust
Recently I was asked to take on a very sad case. In short, back in August the male half of a couple suddenly died. And all the couple’s photos, documents, and other stuff was effectively locked on their computer which ran Ubuntu Linux. To make matters worse, the computer was in a state where it wouldn’t boot because something was wrong with the file system. And to make matters even worse, the surviving spouse didn’t have any of the passwords to the computer. Now I have been known to make miracles on demand happen, but this one was a bit out of my league. So after trying what she thought were the passwords associated with this computer, I ended up pulling out the hard drive and plugging it into a laptop where I had installed Ubuntu Linux, However, that computer had problems reading the file system of the drive that I had pulled. So I ended up taking the drives to a place called CBL Data Recovery as I knew they would be able to recover the data from the drive. Now recovering the data wasn’t going to be cheap. As in $700 in total. But at least the surviving spouse would have the data. It took about a week, but I was able to give her a hard drive with the data on it formatted for NTFS, which would work on PC or Mac.
Now while this is a bit of an extreme case, it’s not uncommon for this sort of situation to occur. And it really doesn’t have to. Thus I implore each and every person who reads this to plan ahead by doing any or all of the following:
- Gather up all the passwords that your family uses and put them in a password protected password manager. My wife and I use eWallet and we have set things up so that copies of the file that contains our passwords are stored in iCloud and our local NAS system. That way there’s multiple ways for either of us to access the file if needed. The reason why I say that you should use a password manager is that unlike a book or a sheet of paper, it’s secure from prying eyes. On top of that, in the case that I described, the late husband had his passwords stored in a document file on the computer that I had to rescue data from. Making it inaccessible to his widow.
- If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, I strongly suggest that you add a family member or two as a Legacy Contact. In the event of your passing, they can access your devices as well as a lot of the data stored in iCloud. Though you have to contact Apple to assist you with that. This document from Apple speaks to how this works, and how to turn this feature on. The big reason why I strongly suggest that those in the Apple ecosystem turn this on is that if you don’t, nobody, not even Apple themselves can help you in the event of the passing of a loved one.
- Now Microsoft doesn’t have anything like Apple’s Legacy Contact. But Google has what’s called the Inactive Account Manager. You can find out more by clicking here and the process to set this up is straightforward. Though I will admit that Apple’s Legacy Contact option is far more expansive than what Google offers.
One other thing, if you’re in the Apple Ecosystem, you might also want to set up a recovery contact. That’s someone who can help you to unlock your iPhone, Mac or iPad if you need to because you forgot your passcode or something. You can find out more about how to set up a recovery contact here.
The passing of a loved one is always a traumatic experience. But if you plan ahead, you can reduce some of that trauma for those left behind so that all they have to do is remember the good times they had with the person who is no longer among us.
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