Apple (in England) copper-bottoms laws, and require too much documentation.
When a person dies their estate goes through probabte. You get official documents as a result. That documentarion is effectively a court order - they are good enough to get banks to release funds from the dead person's account to the executor of the will.
Apple sometimes do not recognise those documents and refuse to unlock devices that used to belong to dead people, even if the device is mentioned in the dead person's will.
Here they're not asking for access to the information - they just want the device to be unlocked. Apple recognised, after publication, that they'd made an error in this case, but they maintain that a court order is required for access to iCloud accounts. But they don't recognise grants of probate as valid court orders.
Apple's policies around deceased users' hardware and accounts has recently (early 2015) changed, so it's possible this particular problem wouldn't happen again. Dead users do appear to happen infrequently enough that not every CSR seems to know what to do when you call in about one, though.
However, without court orders of some sort, you're probably completely out of luck. A death certificate used to be enough, but no longer.
I found myself in that particular edge case (along with two Canadian families) earlier this year, as a relative had passed away in a state that did not mandate probate, and the family had elected to not go through the courts, and so had no legal documentation establishing an executor or estate.
Apple ultimately said that they needed a court order to close the account or transfer the purchases to another one, otherwise the account and login would remain active forever, period.
> I would imagine not everyone would want their devices unlocked by family members if they die say in an accident.
That's just a normal part of living and dying. If you want a specific thing to happen or not happen after you die, digital or not, you either put it in your will, or you let the state's default occur. Notwithstanding the further policies of any organization like Apple.
I think he means to remove the find my iPhone protection. With find my iPhone, you cannot restore the phone, you're always asked for the Apple ID before you can use it again. You can either remove it in settings of the iPhone, on iCloud.com or apple can remove it remotely.
If the opinion of the dead didn't matter, Wills would be pointless. In this scenario, if you don't want the living to access your phone, then just state that.
> It should only matter to you if you think you or someone you care about will die some day.
Why? When I'm dead, anything that anybody does will no affect me. (assuming I had an iPhone) Apple shouldn't not-unlock it because I might not want that. I want nothing, since I'm dead.
First I heard of that phrase, but I think he's using it correctly. Many privacy laws and information laws only apply to the living. Apple "copper-bottoms" these laws and acts as if they apply in perpetuity.
When a person dies their estate goes through probabte. You get official documents as a result. That documentarion is effectively a court order - they are good enough to get banks to release funds from the dead person's account to the executor of the will.
Apple sometimes do not recognise those documents and refuse to unlock devices that used to belong to dead people, even if the device is mentioned in the dead person's will.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26448158
Here they're not asking for access to the information - they just want the device to be unlocked. Apple recognised, after publication, that they'd made an error in this case, but they maintain that a court order is required for access to iCloud accounts. But they don't recognise grants of probate as valid court orders.