According to the online newspaper L'Essenziale, "there are increasing cases of people asking for access to the photos and messages of dead family members" but "large technology companies are resisting". An example is the case of Carlo Costanza, a chef from Agrigento transplanted to Milan for work, who died at the age of 25 in a car accident in March 2017, in which his iPhone was also destroyed. The parents, driven by the desire to create a project dedicated to his memory, asked Apple Italia Ltd. to be able to access the iCloud account of their son, where photos and videos, messages and applications, notes and research were synchronized. However, the company did not want to provide parents with access "until they had submitted a document designating them as “agents of the deceased” and “formal bearers of a legitimate consent”, as provided for by the Electronic Communication Privacy Act", US law for the regulation of the authorized disclosure of data. Costanza’s case is not the first of its kind that involves large technology companies; among these, the case of Ellsworth in 2003: at the time, the service reports, "Yahoo! refused to give the father of a 20-year-old US soldier who died in Iraq access to his son's emails”. For some time, however, in Italy there has been more sensitivity in favor of relatives who request to be able to access the data of their loved ones. In June 2022, the Court of Milan granted to a woman access to not only the iCloud digital identity but also the email accounts and social profiles (WhatsApp included) of his beloved deceased husband. Moreover, if at the time of the Ellsworth case, access to digital identity data had been banned "in the most absolute way", the 2018 reform of the privacy code changed everything. The approval of the 2018 European Union General Data Protection Regulation formally stated that "the regulation does not apply to the personal data of deceased persons", leaving member states the freedom to legislate on the matter. In the case of Italy, Article 2 of the new Privacy Code states that, in the event of death, certain rights of the deceased may be exercised by "those who have an interest in themselves, or act to protect the interested party, as their representative, or for family reasons worthy of protection", in conformity with the freedom of heirs to access to bank accounts or INPS data for the reconstruction of pension information or for the verification of the existence of any debts with the Revenue Agency. Unless the deceased, while still alive, has given an "unambiguous, specific, free and informed" indication to prohibit access to anyone after death.
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