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The article could do without the emotionally manipulative headline (the newer one seems a bit better: "Widow fights Apple, privacy law in honouring husband's dying wish").

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.

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> "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.

I noticed that GitHub allows you to do this now.

https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/setti...

I saw that a few weeks ago, and I thought it was awesome.

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.

FWIW, Google has had an "Inactive Account manager"[0] for quite a while.

[0] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546

Doesn't Facebook already do this?

Facebook will "memorialize" your account and hand moderation over to someone you designate.

Come to think of it, you would think getting someone declared "facebook dead" would be more common as a malicious act.

Google definitely does.

That reminds me that it might trigger since I’m not really using my Google accounts any more...

Great life hack! I wonder if you will still get profiled ads when you are dead.