I stopped saving seed phrases in digital storage and sometimes, cloud services because of how vulnerable these systems can be. I have experienced it first hand when one of my family member's wallet was drained because he stored it in a cloud service that got compromised.

So a few years ago, I created a new wallet and wrote that the seed phrase in a notebook with a semi-hard cover and never looked back since. It's not the best way due to the presence of physical accidents/attacks but at the end of the day, its the safest at the moment.

Sorry to your friends, OP. I hope they don't experience such preventable losses again.