Digital life

Cloud photos: making sure they aren't lost

Your photos may be in one account no one else can open.

For many people, the family photo album now lives in a phone or a cloud account. If no one can get into that account, the photos can be very hard to recover.

Where photos usually live

• iCloud Photos (iPhone)
• Google Photos (Android or the app)
• Amazon Photos, Dropbox or OneDrive
• A computer or external hard drive
• Social media accounts

Tools that let family get in

• Apple Legacy Contact: someone you choose can request access to your Apple account data, including photos, messages, notes and files, after your death. It doesn't include purchased movies, music or books, or saved passwords.
• Google Inactive Account Manager: you choose who gets your Google Photos and other data if your account goes unused for a set time.
• Facebook legacy contact: someone you choose can manage a memorialized account and download the photos, videos and posts you shared, if you allowed it. It doesn't include messages, or photos that were synced but never posted.

Other things people do

• Sharing a family album, so others already have copies
• Downloading favorites to a hard drive once or twice a year
• Printing a small book of the most important photos