iCloud recovery contact vs iCloud legacy contact

July 17, 2022 12:56 AM

My dear friend passed away recently. Their family wants to get access to the iCloud account, Google account, and iPhone. I was my friend’s iCloud recovery contact, but not their iCloud legacy contact. Will I be able to help them?

Recovery contacts are meant to help a living person keep access to their account but not necessarily all their data (end-to-end-encrypted data like iMessages and passwords run the risk of being wiped, based on my tests with my own accounts). Legacy contacts are meant to allow next-of-kin access to to accounts and data and require prior planning and a death certificate. My friend didn’t set up anyone as an iCloud legacy contact, as far as I know.

I stand ready to jump through whatever hoops I can to help my friend’s family. If they have my friend’s locked iPhone and not-logged-in Mac, and I have my friend’s iCloud account username and recovery contact status, will we be able to access my friend’s account and keep all the end-to-end-encrypted data like passwords and iMessages? If not, and my friend has no legacy contact, will the account and all its data be accessible through some other, more involved procedure with Apple?

Any experience you may have with this process would be helpful. A step-by-step guide that actually completes a recovery process would be ideal, as opposed to merely showing how to set it up or use it but not actually doing so.

posted by infinitewindow to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

As a recovery contact, your device can be asked to get confirmation of their changing passwords to access their device. You have to give permission for this to happen (so that it doesn't allow the wrong people to get into her phone).

I'm guessing it's legally questionable for your friend's family to pretend to be her and make this happen. You would be involved in this deception, knowing that it wasn't your friend logging in.

Are you absolutely certain that your friend would want their family to have complete access to their devices?

I'm the recovery contact for a couple of very good friends and I certainly wouldn't do this unless perhaps it was requested by their lawyer overseeing their estate, and I'd want indemnity before doing it. Even then I'm not sure I would, absent instructions in their will or something to indicate to me that they wanted me to do this.
posted by tillsbury at 1:13 AM on July 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

You’ll be most able to help them if iCloud backup of messages and iCloud Keychain are being used. Best bet is to reset on web and then add them to a new device and let everything sync over. If those things aren’t iCloud synced (i.e. they were serious about e2ee), the family’s only shot is to guess either the iPhone passcode or the Mac password before they are locked after x more attempts. You can reset a macOS account password with iCloud access if they allowed that (support article), but the non-iCloud keychain will be wiped out.

On older Macs that didn’t have FileVault turned on, you also might be able to pull out the drive and recover the local iMessages database. You’ll need a guide specific to their macOS version.

Proceed carefully!
posted by michaelh at 9:24 AM on July 17, 2022