OT? Stories that make apple look bad

[micky]

Here are some interesting stories, not necessarily very recent, that make Apple look bad. This is not to pick on Apple -- people on Usenet seem happy to see about anyone or anything that looks bad. ;-)

U.K. Judges Say Apple Is Getting Cute With Samsung Court Order Apple Removes Code Hiding Samsung Court Order on UK Website

I'm trying to get an ipad unlocked for the brother of a late friend and I came across one of these. Today I searched on Britain, but I haven't tried to see if Britain has more of this per capita than the US.

"In iCloud's terms and conditions, Apple warns: ?You agree that your Account is non-transferable and that any rights to your Apple ID or Content within your Account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate your Account may be terminated and all Content within your Account deleted."

So this is an insane location to keep any records. I don't think they make this point strongly enough or no one with connected brain cells woudl do it.

Don't competitors have a more owner-friendly (that is, less owner-hostile) policy?

I'd never lock my ipad in the first place**. And I see now that I will never put anything in the icloud.

**If he didn't lock his ipad, you don' thave to tell them when he dies. (At least until they start circulating all info everywhere.)

Not the same story, probably worse:

[Ed Pawlowski]

Apple makes good products, but they are very controlling. For that reason, I don't buy their products. Sounds like the account you mention is now just gone.

[trader_4]

urt-order-on-uk-website/

-consent.html

It doesn't bother me. If you want people to have access upon your death, just make sure the account info and PWD is with your will and instructions for your executor and/or successors. Apple won't know if you're dead and really doesn't care. Seems to me all they are saying is that if they are provided with a death certificate and a request to delete the account and info, they will do so. Actually, I guess they should say if presented with that and a request from the executor, they will do so. But in the grand scheme of things, who cares? If you have some pics or something of value there, just make sure the info on where it is and the account info is with your other stuff for the executor, together with any instructions. They will be able to access it, get it, copy it, etc.

[Ed Pawlowski]

On the surface it may seem a bit much, but if you think about it, they are protecting both you and themselves. If you get POd at someone you can just forge an email and have their account closed. You can be pretty sure it has been tried.

[nospam]

so did pcs.

nonsense.

buy an adapter. no big deal.

the real problem was finding ink because the printer makers stopped supporting them.

stuck in the past, always.

[Ralph Mowery]

PC's just change the softwear so the drivers for the old devices will not work. Had to toss a scanner years ago because of this. Now some of the older programs I have will not work under Win 10. Just keep an old XP machine around for that.

In industry where I worked we had to have old machines around to program the old equipment as anything faster than a 486 processor would not work. The newer computers were faster than the serial port could detect a change in data and the programs though the device was in error or not there. Companies as large as the one I worked for just do not change out things that cost around $ 2000 when you have over 100 of them , or the lab equipment is close to $ 100,000 when they are just old. Then to scrounge up a 3 inch drive disk of the PS2 type interface for that lab equipment.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Well it is a big deal. I still have very good snow tires from my '62 Corvair on wheels and they don't fit my '18 Genesis. This is just to make you spend more money. No simple adapter available to maintain backward technology.

USB was a smart move, IMO. Made life easier..

[nospam]

that has absolutely nothing to do with computers nor is the tire size difference done to make you spend money either.

yep. very much so.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Nor did the change to USB. some forms of humor allude you.

[trader_4]

That's right, USB is an industry wide standard.

+1

You must have to look really hard. I haven't seen a PC with a serial port in maybe 20 years, unless someone added it after purchase, which isn't common either, unless you had some legacy gear to connect. He really is stuck in the past.

[micky]

That may be what they are saying, but in the examples I gave, they wanted a court order too. which in Britain (and the US too I think) would apparently cost 100's of dollars, and in one case they never managed to unlock the ipad before the boy's funeral, even though he knew he was dying and it had notes about what he wanted for his funeral. .

Again, it seems that they didn't

Easier said than done. Wait until you, or someone you know, is old and stupid. While the legal clause is there, they could make it more clear; they could advise people not to lock their ipads and explain in detail, in red, on the first page of the manual or on the outside of the box, what can happen if they do, including mentioning the loss of their files after their death.

My friend was an eternal computer newbie when he died at 78, and no one was sneaking looks in is ipad, nor did he save secret info there. I'm sure he would never have locked the thing if the first page of the manual, in red, pointed out the trouble he might cause me and his brother by doing so.

I've arranged to get a copy of his will, a printout of an ancestry.com page, a power of attorney, and a scan of his brother's driver's license

-- what a pain for him and me -- but I still don't know they will really unlock it. Any data on the thing will be gone.

If Apple wanted to prevent hardship to their customers, they could prevent 90+ percent of it.

[The Real Bev]

My ex-SIL told us to buy every USR 56K modem (or maybe am even earlier model) we found at yard sales -- there was a certain brand of alarm system that would use ONLY that model modem and they sold for really high prices. Never found one :-(

[Dave Higton]

I think you mean "elude".

Dave

[Chris]

Nope. Legally it's a data protection issue (in the UK). Data cannot be transferred to another person without the owner's consent. This is a fact for all data owners. When you die you lose rights to all cloud music services, ebooks, Facebook, online gaming accounts, everything.

This is the same for Google, Dropbox, Amazon, etc.

If this really matters to people they need to make provisions in their wills to suit their preferences.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Yeah, that too!

[rbowman]

We have an interface that sends pages when triggered by selected events. Most are sent via email but it used to be a dial up connection to a service that sent to messages to alphanumeric pagers. Toward the end we had trouble finding modems that could connect at the 1200 or 2400 baud rates the paging services used.

[trader_4]

What do you think happens with any online account after you die? It's going to be the same thing. There are two choices:

A - Your executor and/or survivors have your account credentials and continue to log on as you did, access it and do what they want as if they were you.

B - You get a death certificate, certificate of executorship, and contact the company requesting access to whatever info is on there that you need.

Method B is the strictly legal method.

It's really no different than a bank account, safety deposit box, or similar in the brick and mortar world. What would you propose? Someone can email customer support, say, John Smith is dead, give me his password? And in some cases, the company can't help retrieve what's there, because it's encrypted and even they don't have the key. Many cloud storage providers have that as part of their service and they make it very clear. If you lose your credentials, your password in particular, you're screwed because they can't recover anything for you. Many people value that data privacy. I'm not familiar with what exactly Apple tells customers when they sign up for their cloud services, are you?

You can't protect people from themselves. Every computer I've owned has prompted for, encouraged passwords. It's clear the purpose is to keep unauthorized people out. If you set up a PWD and are using it frequently to log on, what does one think is going to happen if you're not there? This is like not having papers with your various bank accounts, life insurance policies, etc in one safe place or dying intestate. It's really not Apple's problem. If they have no back door that makes recovery by them possible, I'd bet that it's clearly spelled out when you create the lock.

And again, what would your solution be? That seems reasonable to me. It's exactly what you'd have to do to get someone's safe deposit box open or access to their bank account after their death.

Their customer is apparently dead. What you consider a hardship is exactly what you have to go through to get access to the account of any deceased. What would you propose? Call up customer support and say, John Smith is dead, give me his password? I see some problems with that method.

[trader_4]

en-consent.html

There's two very different classes of things all lumped together there. One class is material the rights to which never belonged to you at all, eg cloud music services, ebooks, etc. IT seems logical and legally appropriate that under the law survivors have no claim to any of that. You were paying for a limited use service to access material that you don't own.

The other class is material that is in fact yours, eg photos you took and u ploaded to Dropbox. A company may have a policy that you're screwed, you automatically lose whatever you put up there upon death, but I don't see that as necessary to protect privacy, nor is it a law here in the USA, AFAIK. And I don't see how one can lose all rights to an online gaming account upon their death, which you cited as an example. If the deceased has $50K sitting there, the company gets to keep it? And if they can't keep money, it seems odd there is a law in the UK that says the company has to destroy photos, manuscripts, documents and such that they chose to upload. AFAIK, in the US there is no such law and IDK what any particular company does or doesn't do.

I don't have anything unique, one copy only, that I need to worry about. I do use Mega for cloud backup. They are one that uses secure encryption on both ends and they warn you that without the PWD they can't help you, even they can't break the encryption.

[micky]

So when you die, do you lose rights to your car, house, and business too? If not that, what about the *data* that relates to the business? Do you get to keep the business but lose rights to its records?

And if they lose rights, then consent makes no difference.

Even if it is only about the cloud, if this is the law, I don't see what reasonable state purpose it serves to take away things they wrote and stored on the cloud, or copied to the cloud, and I think it ought to be changed.

You said they lose rights when they die. Do they or don't they? If they can make provisions in the will, what about the usual last clause, present in most wills, "Everything else I leave to, for example, my children". Why isn't that enough for everyone? Why wasn't that enough in the urls I had.

In the US and most of US law started with British law, if one dies without a will, his next of kin get his property. With an unmarried man, that's his parents if alive. With a widow, that's her children.

So why is a will needed at all? If someone dies without a will, the government gets to keep his property? That's an even bigger problem.

[trader_4]

Agree with you, I don't understand this UK law, as put forth here.

A will isn't needed, as long as you're OK with whatever assets you have being distributed according to a hierarchy established by state law. If you have little or nothing, that's not a problem. If you have substantial assets, it may be, if your idea of who gets what is different from the states. Also dying intestate is probably more of a problem as opposed to where there is a will. For example, I'd suspect that someone is going to have to certify that they looked for a will, can't find a will, etc. And who would that person be, etc, etc, etc.

But in any case, the govt doesn't get to keep the property unless I guess there are no identifiable successors. If there are, the state law sets out who gets what percentage.