Yahoo! hands over dead man's email
Soldier's parents inherit his inbox
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
Email provider Yahoo has complied with a court order to give a dead soldier's email account to his parents.
Lance Corporal Justin Ellsworth, a US Marine, was killed while working for the US army in Iraq. His parents asked Yahoo for access to his email account but the company turned them down, according to AP.
But on Wednesday of last week a judge in Oakland Co, Michigan ordered Yahoo to hand over access to the account. Yahoo did not fight the ruling but wanted legal clarification.
Last week the family received a CD of documents and is expecting more printouts this week. But the family complain they have only got emails received by Justin, not those he wrote.
The family told AP they wanted to make a scrapbook from Justin's emails because he told them how important they were to keep him going.
Justin's father, John Ellsworth, told Detroit radio he was glad he and Yahoo had reached agreement so quickly. The ruling puts Yahoo in technical breach of its own privacy guidelines.®
Related stories
Sniping bloggers can keep America safe from terrorists and cats!
Yahoo! growth! slows!
Yahoo! and Google's top brass cash in
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
