“Bereavement is traumatic enough without having to find someone to expose personal information”

This section of the magnificent magazine you hold concerns matters of the real world, but I’m going to talk about the implications that relate to people who have departed from it. If you’re not in the mood to think about end-of-life matters, mark this page and move on, but remember to come back as I’ve got things that you will need to consider.

Geoffrey, George, Sue and Chris are amongst the long-term customers we’ve lost this year. Their passing generated vast amounts of IT-based anguish for loved ones, which we helped to resolve.

The most frequent request we get is to remove Windows passwords so grieving families can access financial details stuffed into an email folder. Occasionally, this becomes more involved when I’m asked to provide passwords for email accounts so loved ones can hurdle a legal barrier or retrieve confidential documents. I’d go as far as to say secret documents. One data-recovery job for precious photos also turned up files that were, let’s say, a and Jerry Springer in one afternoon.