Wills, Estates and Succession Planning Senior Associate, Alyce Martin, and Law Graduate, Emma Watson discuss how Apple has announced that they will be introducing a new Account Legacy feature and how it may work.
New iCloud Legacy Account Access
At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this morning, Apple announced that they will be introducing a new Account Legacy feature in their new operating system MacOs Monterey.
The Account Legacy feature will let you nominate someone, such as a family member or friend, who you would like to access your data once you have passed away. Your nominated person will then be able to access your iCloud account, which stores among other things your photos and videos.
How iCloud Account Legacy is proposed to work?
By nominating a family member or friend to be the administrator of your account, they will be able to sign in to your account through a dedicated legacy contact Apple ID. The nominated person will also require an access key to see anything that is password protected on your devices.
Apple has stated that this Account Legacy feature will not give your nominated person access to any payment information or logins, which are stored in your keychain.
Through gaining access via the Account Legacy feature your nominated person will be able to download and view anything you have stored on your iCloud account, which includes your photos and videos. This feature means that this data and important family moments captured and stored on your iCloud account will not be lost after you die.
Implications
We are wary as to how this Account Legacy feature will be used in practice and what restrictions will be implemented. As Apple has just announced this feature, we are unsure how this will play out and await Apple's launch of their new operating system MacOs Monterey to provide more information on this new feature.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
