The family of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq was denied access to the soldier’s Yahoo e-mail account due to the company’s policies, raising questions of whether businesses should balance privacy with special requests.
The Marine, Justin Ellsworth, 20, was killed in November by a roadside bomb in Falluja while assisting civilian evacuations before the large-scale military offensive against insurgents in the city, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press. But when Ellsworth’s father John tried to recover his e-mail account, he was barred due to Yahoo’s policy of not giving e-mail passwords to anyone besides the account holder.