What Happens to Your Digital Life After You Die? Part One: The Phone Nobody Can Unlock
You probably know your phone's passcode without thinking twice. But have you ever stopped to wonder what happens to everything inside it when you're no longer here to unlock it? The answer is far more surprising and complicated than most people realize.
Janell McBride ·
One day, someone will pick up your phone for the last time. It probably won't happen in a courtroom or while an attorney is reading your will. It'll happen a few days after the funeral, when the flowers are beginning to wilt, the sympathy cards have been tucked into a neat pile, and the kitchen table has become the place where every difficult decision seems to end up. Someone is sorting paperwork. Someone else is making coffee that nobody is really drinking. The conversations come in waves, shifting from laughter to silence without warning because grief has never followed a schedule. Then someone notices your phone. "It has to be in there somewhere." They're not trying to invade your privacy. They're trying to find the picture you took at Christmas because everyone remembers you insisting that one more photo would be the good one. They're looking for the video of your granddaughter's dance recital because you were the only person who recorded the entire performance instead of giving up after thirty seconds. Maybe they're hoping to find the recipe you always promised to text but never quite got around to sending. Maybe they just want to hear your voice again. The first person confidently enters your birthday. When the phone rejects it, someone suggests your anniversary because "you've used that for years." That doesn't work either. Before long, the room has turned into the kind of family discussion that somehow happens at every gathering. One relative is convinced the password has something to do with the golden retriever. Another quickly reminds everyone there were two golden retrievers. Someone else insists the answer has to involve the cat because, somehow, everything eventually involved the cat. Then another family member laughs and says, "Remember when they watched that documentary about identity theft? After that every password looked like it belonged to the Pentagon." For a few minutes, everyone laughs. Not because the situation is funny, but because families