A sadly common question for Mac 911 since the start of the pandemic was how to deal with someone’s online accounts and data stored on computers and mobile devices after they’d died. In most cases, preparations have to be made to provide this sort of posthumous access. Apple added an option in late 2021 called Digital Legacy that lets you set up your iCloud account in such a way that you can make it a simple task for appointed people to retrieve specific data, like photos and contacts.
But a reader recently asked the inverse question: How can data be locked away forever in the event of a death? Some people have secrets; others are intensely private; others wish to be forgotten. The author Franz Kafka burned an estimated 90 percent of his work while alive. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 41, leaving instructions to his dear friend and literary executor Max Brod: “Everything I leave behind me…in the way of
