An anonymous reader writes "I want this to be anonymous because I don't want to drag the name of the person in question onto a public forum.
A good friend of mine had her younger brother apparently commit suicide last week. I don't want to get into the details but needless to say he was a young, promising CS Major that was close to being accepted into a very prestigious school. He was very Into Linux as well as PHP/MySQL coding. He left absolutely nothing behind for the family as far as a death note or explanation, and there is some possibility that this was all somehow a huge accident.
On the callous realist side, The family is in a situation where proof of accidental death would change how this was viewed in terms of paying for parts of the funeral (I did not think this was done anymore, but this is what they tell me.) The second and more human factor is that some members of the family are hoping to find something.....anything.....that might leave them an explanation as to why this all went down.
Being the one with the most computer skills that the family knows, they have asked me if I could help them try to find some information. My possible angles are — His Linux Laptop, His University, GMAIL, and Hotmail E-MAIL accounts, and a second Myspace profile that apparently has been tagged as private.
The first thing I wondered is how ethical people would consider trying to say...crack his root password in a situation like this. I wouldn't attempt to crack a man's account for his wife because she thinks she is cheating on him, as his life is his own business. In Death, would you have the same respect for a person's private thoughts?
Secondly, If I contacted places like Google, MSN, the University, and Myspace what are the odds that they would give me access to any of his accounts? I have links to obituaries and such to prove that he is indeed gone. Would it be a matter of not giving it to me (Maybe giving it to the family instead) or is this something that they would not do at all?
Any opinions on if I should do this and if so, how I should go about this?
Anonymous Coward"
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Surely if he's dead all of his possessions (including any passwords) would go to the next of kin or whoever was mentioned in the will. It's not unethical to help someone retrieve their own password
I know many years ago we helped a father get into his son's email to try and prove MURDER. Yahoo was very cooperative for next of kin with the appropriate paperwork. Try the legal means first!
I personally recommend your friend's family should not try to find answers. My daughter committed suicide a year and a half ago and after about a year, I decided to examine her PC in the hope I will find some answers. Circumstances were similar to what you mentioned: No note, no reasons, nothing. We kind of know what triggered the event but that's about it. Searching through her PC made things worse, quite frankly. I got very few answers I was looking for but after finishing the job, I have more unanswered
Doesn't seem unethical to me (Score:1)
Past experience: Yahoo. (Score:1)
Simple answer: Don't do it! (Score:1)