At WWDC today Apple announced a slew of new features. But one was particularly interesting — a new Account Legacy feature designed for your death.
It seems pretty damn morbid for Apple to be planning for your demise. But in a digital world it makes a lot of sense.
Account Legacy lets you select other people — such as family members and friends– to gain access to your account once you die.
How does the iCloud Account Legacy work?
So how will this work? Anyone you select as an administrator will be able to sign into your account through a dedicated legacy contact Apple ID. They will also require an access key to see anything that is password protected on your devices.
They will be able to access and download anything you have stored in iCloud, including photos and videos.
This means that all of your data won’t be lost once you pass away. This could be particularly important as modern world dwellers increasingly digitise important documents.
It’s worth noting that selected administrators won’t be able to access any payment information or logins you have stored via Keychain.
This is just one of many new iCloud features announced at WWDC.
Others include:
- Account Recovery: which lets you add another person you can request access from. They won’t be able to access you data, though
- Private Relay: this routes web traffic through two servers to hide what is being browsed and by whom. If you think this sounds like a VPN, you’d be right
- Hide My Email: this lets you use a randomly generated email address while signing up for stuff like newsletters and services. They will forward to your regular email address and there’s no limit on how many faux email addresses you create
- HomeKit Secure Video: this let’s it detect people, animals, cars and packages in your security camera feeds