When digital data lives on after death: How to navigate questions of consent, privacy

When her son died unexpectedly a year and a half ago, a Toronto mother found herself at a loss trying to recover his cryptocurrency funds.

“His iPhone is locked, it’s with the photo recognition, and unfortunately we have not had any luck getting in,” caller Christina told NEWSTALK 1010. “We’ve been locked out of his accounts, we don’t even know what he had.”

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She had phoned in to weigh in on a CTV News Toronto report that revealed that increasingly families were turning to funeral homes for assistance in unlocking their loved one’s phone; hoping that through a fingerprint or face scan of the body, they could break in with biometrics.

A lack of access to digital accounts after death is becoming all too common, according to experts, who say that non-physical assets are often overlooked in estate planning. Half of Canadians don’t have a last will and testament, according to a recent poll by Angus Reid — let alone a proper plan for digital data.

“Often we don’t know what someone’s digital footprint is, where exactly they banked and you know, all the subscriptions they are paying for on their credit card account,” Erin Bury, co-founder and CEO of the online platform Willful told CTV News Toronto. “So it’s so crucial for executors and family members to have access to these digital accounts. “

Online tools like Willful and Epilogue encourage users to list digital assets and wishes as part of their estate planning, so that executors aren’t forced to hunt down online accounts that exist without a paper trail.

Password sharing can prevent the desperation that sends family members to funeral homes in search of a fingerprint or face-scan, but financial planners caution against listing those codes in the will as it becomes a public document.

Moreover, said estate planning lawyer Daniel Goldgut, password sharing is not advisable for specific types of tech-giant accounts.

• READ MORE: 'Grisly problem' for family locked out of deceased relatives' phones

“It violates the terms of service with those companies, so it’s not black and white,”Goldgut said. “The solution is being cobbled together right now.”

Goldgut co-founded Epilogue, which allows users to create a social media will. The platform points users to the pre-planning and legacy contact options available through Facebook, Google, and Apple, which allow the user to indicate what should happen to their digital data after death.

An online password is shown in this stock photo. (Valerie Potapova/Shutterstock.com)

“Most of the big-tech companies right now actually give people the ability to do some pre-planning, and most people don’t know that at all,” Goldgut said.

Indicating consent for digital access ahead of time can also avoid a larger ethical dilemma for those left to handle the estate.

“There are a lot of privacy concerns,” said Charlene Chu, a University of Toronto assistant professor who specializes in technology for older adults.

“It is possible that people don’t want to share those things, and wouldn’t have given consent to share those things if they even were alive.”

Many people who use technology, Chu said, don’t fully understand the ramifications of where their digital data goes — and who might have access to it.

“I think if anything, there’s a larger call here, to just society in general, to think about how some of what we are doing online and what we’re doing using our digital devices could eventually be accessed by others after we have passed away.”