When Leonardo Fabbretti adopted his son Dama from Ethiopia he never planned that his beloved son would be dead from cancer just after reaching his teen year. In a quest to collect every memory of his son, Leonardo made sure that he had access to his son’s iPhone but an unexpected restart caused him to lose the ability to access the phone. Since then, Leonardo has been on a quest to unlock the phone but has, up until now, met with little success due to encryption which prevents even Apple from accessing the data without the passcode. This situation mirrors the recent standoff between Apple and the U.S. government over creating a backdoor that would allow third parties to gain access to a device which was resolved only after the FBI crafted a backdoor of their own. With modern encryption being difficult to break, it is imperative that any important access information, such as passwords and codes, be given to a trusted source, such as a lawyer, for safekeeping. A little foresight can go a long way to avoid many difficult or impossible to solve problems so when planning an estate always keep in mind what will be needed to access to digitally stored information.
See David Goldman, Grieving father pleads with Apple to unlock his dead son’s iPhone, ABC 17, April 1, 2016.
Special thanks to Brian Cohan (Attorney at Law, Law Offices of Brian J. Cohan, P.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.
