My dad passed away recently and I have his iPhone. His estranged wife is the primary holder of his phone plan and has marked the phone as lost. He was planning to divorce her after a messy breakup but passed away before he could.
I just wanted to back up the photos in the phone but can’t access it at all.
Aside from asking her to unlock the phone, do I have any other options to access his photos? I doubt she’d unlock it since she knows I have the phone and marked it as missing anyway.
Apple’s security is pretty good and will work against you in this case. If you know the password you can unlock it but otherwise you’re probably kinda boned for the time being.
You could still hold onto it and hope someone comes out with an exploit down the road that bypasses the security but it’s a longshot.
If it has an eSIM I would power it down completely or store in a faraday pouch to block signals to it, as if they do a remote erase on it there’s no coming back from that.
There’s a decent chance that the iPhone syncs to iCloud each night. It’s a feature Apple kind of snuck onto people and most people don’t change. Photos are one of those things that gets backed up during this time.
Thing is, you need to get it connected to WiFi that it has connected to before and just leave it on the charger, probably best to do this over 48 hours and then try getting in. The backups usually happen at night time.
If you know the WiFi where he lived but can’t access it, you could trick the iPhone into thinking it’s the same WiFi by creating that same WiFi signal name and password and the iPhone will connect to that new hotspot you create with the same instructions. If it’s valuable enough to you, you could buy a router and set it up on yours at home with that information or go cheap and set it up on your phone’s hotspot. If you don’t know that one, any other WiFi network it once connected to should do. It just only works over WiFi at night.
Once that happens, you can try resetting his password on iCloud.com and see if that lets you in. Or see if Apple can help you getting into the iCloud account with his death certificate. I’m not sure on that last part, might need to check into it before asking just to make sure they don’t lock you out of it or something.
You may not even have to do the WiFi trick, it might already have backed up everything already and you can try getting into this iCloud account now and see if the pictures are there. They’re accessible over any web browser on any operating system.
Unfortunately I don’t have his icloud password. I know he has it saved on a note on his phone but by now I think his wife must have changed it.
I had access to the phone for a bit but when I tried to back up the photos, it asked for the icloud password. I entered what was on the notepad and it asked for facial ID. I’m guessing she was notified that someone (me) was trying to log into his icloud and so she marked it as lost. At this point, it seems my only hope is to try to appeal to my stepbro who I (thought I) had an ok relationship with to see if he can mark the phone as not lost. Because I’m sure it’s him who is doing everything since my stepmom is not tech saavy.
Try the “forgot your password” link on his iCloud account. When you go to iCloud.com, there’s a link there for it. There might be some way that you can reset the iCloud account and get in that way. Most of these methods have you verify you own the account like a link in an email or text to the phone or something. Worth a try to see especially since you physically have the phone.
If he left his iPhone with the messages showing on the screen even when locked, you may be lucky and get to send a text to the phone and get a code to reset the iCloud account that way.
Either that or going through Apple may be your best bet since the pics are likely backed up to his Apple’s iCloud. Apple gives everyone free 5GB so surely there’s something there even if he didn’t pay for it or it lapsed after his passing.
I got this idea from the San Bernardino shooters years ago. Apple refused to help the FBI hack into the phone but said they would help if the FBI let the phone back up to iCloud at night like this because it’d be on their servers and technically theirs to comply with.
So it seems this might be some type of legitimate way of getting stuff out of an iPhone like this by Apple’s own admission. I just checked and Apple does have an article on this exact situation and what they can and cannot do https://support.apple.com/en-us/102431
My condolences to you and your family. Good luck getting those pictures.
I checked out the article but I’m not sure I could qualify by law to retrieve his data. Since he’s still legally married, my stepmom is the next of kin and is the one who could request the data.
This has been causing tons of problems since she’s been planning the funeral and doing things the family doesn’t approve of (like setting the date before my brother who’s out of the country could get home).
Thanks for the detailed reply though. Seems like my best chance is to appeal to my stepbrother.