Hi,

My name is Anders and I'm the CEO of Brattoo Propaganda Software. Quite often when I have my 1 on 1 training sessions I understand that many of us are trying to achieve something very specific, we are preparing our digital heritage for our loved ones, for our kids. We want them to be able to enjoy our photos and understand what is in them. We write captions, add faces, keywords and assign them to albums to bring structure to our digital images. Once upon a time this was done by placing our printed paper photos into albums, but now it is different, now it’s all digital. In this newsletter we will talk about something that most of us don’t usually want to think about, our afterlife and digital heritage. 

Take care and stay safe.

Our photos

We all have them, huge photo albums in the Photos application. Our photos are quite often one of the things that we hold most dear. The photos are our memories to look back upon and show to our friends and family. I once heard from a fireman that the most common object that people take with them when escaping a house fire is their photos, that is the one thing that can’t be replaced. But that was back in the days when photos were physical objects. Today the photos are digital and safely stored on our hard drives and in the cloud, right? Or, are they really saved? Do our relatives, kids or inheritors get access to our photos when we die? Well, it might not be as simple as you might think!

Our computer and hard drives

A few years back I would argue that it is easy to retrieve files from a computer, either you started your computer in Target Disk Mode and mounted a regular file volume or you simply opened it up, removed the hard drive and connected it to your computer. It used to be that simple! Today, the default apple filesystem is called APFS and it can be encrypted. We have all heard that encryption is a good thing and that we should use it, right? Well, it is good, and it increases your privacy and integrity, but what happens if you die and someone else tries to access that hard drive? You guessed it, it is still encrypted and without your password it will stay encrypted.

What about my backup?

If you want to be safe you have a backup. A computer or hard drive can crash, get lost, be stolen or destroyed. So perhaps you have a Time Machine backup? Did you notice that there is a small checkbox that allows you to encrypt your Time Machine backup? Perhaps you used it and now we have the same situation, who can access that backup except you?

Perhaps you are using an online service like Crashplan or Backblaze for your backup. Those should be safe right? Well, I haven’t fully looked into the third party solutions and what their license agreement says. You need to know who has access to your data when you are gone, especially since most likely they don’t have access to your password to those services, or are even aware that you used them.

What about iCloud then?

You might have an iCloud Photos Library, or you might even have a Storage Optimised iCloud Library where most of your full size originals are only stored in iCloud, and not on your hard drive. Those must be safe, right? Well, when you signed up for iCloud you agreed to some legal things and one of those things is this piece:

Quite discomforting don’t you think? Your relatives send Apple a death certificate and your account with all your data such as images might be deleted. Gone, nothing left.

So what can be done?

Well, the most obvious thing is that you can share your password(s) with your nearest and most trusted ones. But we are all taught to use different passwords everywhere, and change them regularly, so this might not be as easy as it sounds. You might consider using a password application such as 1Password or Lastpass to keep track of your passwords and make sure that your relatives can also access those. But then again, perhaps you don’t want your relatives to have access to your passwords while you are alive?

Some might think about storing the main password to the password application in a safety deposit box or at a lawyer's office? That might be a solution, but if you change the password regularly it gets a bit tiresome. A similar solution is that you have a long password to your password application, and then give each of your relatives a part of that keyword so that all of them has to be available for the password application to be unlocked! This is like a treasure map split into several parts. Well, that isn’t very practical either.

And when we talk about passwords, let’s not forget about all the services where we have enabled two factor authentication? A two factor authentication is when you enter your credentials such as username and password, and then receive a one time password by SMS or see another notice. Let’s say that your relatives have access to your passwords, but your phone subscription was cancelled before anyone had the time to think about the two way factor authentications. Well, then they are out of luck, again!

There isn’t a single answer to this and there is no universal solution. But we all need to think about it, what happens when I die? Who will be able to access my data? Personally, I have three small kids. What happens if my wife and I die in a car crash tomorrow? Will my kids have access to our photos in the future? Who can help them to get access? There are only digitals photos of them, and they are on one computer and in iCloud.

A solution on the way

As discomforting as this might sound we have a solution on the way. An application that downloads the photos from iCloud and stores them in a separate location or hard drive so that you can have an unencrypted copy of your photos outside of Photos and iCloud just to be sure that your relatives can have access to your photos when you die.

A mind boggling thought would be to be able to mark photos as “public” in the Photos application, by perhaps a keyword, and then making them automatically accessible to online ancestry services. Then it would be possible to connect those photos to your relatives in every family tree that they render online that contains you. This is just a thought, if any of you works at a company that hosts a family tree/ancestry service why not get in contact?

Another aspect of the afterlife

In my wife’s family, on my father in laws side, they have a tradition that one in every generation writes a small book/novel about when they grew up. (Small anecdotes from various times and situations in their life.) They have done so for a few generations now, and those time documents are highly appreciated by the rest of the family. So when I was contacted by Torild in Sweden who was looking for ideas on how to help his father document his life story this wasn’t really a new idea to me. Torild wondered if there is a good application for this, that integrates photos with text and a timeline, to either create a digital or perhaps a printed document. To be honest I don’t know if there is such an application, but if you do I would be thrilled to hear about it.

To sum things up

I’m certain that many of you have lots of thoughts about the quite unsettling issue of sharing treasured photos after we gave departed from this life. We, in a way, all share this issue. If you have any ideas, questions or solutions please don’t hesitate to contact me by replying to this email. I think that we all have to reflect on this, and think about how to handle this although none of us want to. So thoughts, ideas, suggestions on solutions or other related ideas are most welcome. 

1 on 1 training sessions

I’ve decided to continue with my 1 on 1 training sessions, and it is indeed great fun to meet you guys. If you haven’t tried, it but feel that it might be something for you, please feel free to email me. The training sessions can be about anything and will be customized based on your requests. I have over 25 years of experience in the Mac platform, I have been an Apple Solution Expert and have held training in various software over the years. Training sessions are on request by contacting me at training@brattoo.com. Each session is 1 hour and costs 79 USD. If you want to learn more about something, email me at training@brattoo.com and we’ll work out a session just for you.

The free apps section

As I have mentioned in previous letters we have received requests on how to automate some tasks in Apple Photos or tasks related to photos. Those tasks might be tedious to work out manually but are easy for us to solve. The apps include a tool to set the Photos Titles based on the filename (with or without file extension), a tool to copy and apply GPS coordinates between photos, a tool to copy XMP sidecars to image files and finally a utility to set the correct file dates on image files based on the photo date stored in the metadata within the image files. You’ll find all our free apps at https://free.brattoo.com.

This newsletter and previous letters

Several of our readers have requested that we resend previous emails so that they could catch up on earlier tips and information. All previous emails are available online in our Newsletter section at https://newsletter.brattoo.com

Upgrades

Finally, I would just like to tell you that our upgrade discount for Duplicate Annihilator for Photos is still available. For only $4.95 you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to Duplicate Annihilator for Photos and for just two dollars($2.00) more you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to the Duplicate Annihilator Toolbox including a family pack! This means that you get five licenses for you and your family for all versions of Duplicate Annihilator including iPhoto, Aperture, iOS and Photos for only $6.95.

Get the upgrade from: https://upgrade.brattoo.com

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Thank you for your time, I hope that you found this email informative. If you have any feedback, suggestions, questions or ideas then please reply to this email. I read all emails and reply to them in person. And, don't forget to stay safe.

Best Regards,
Anders, CEO and Founder, Brattoo Propaganda Software