How I handle your material

1. What I never ask for

I never ask for your complete recovery phrase, your private keys or your passwords — not in first contact, not later. If fragments are needed — the words you do remember from an incomplete phrase, say — that happens after the contract is signed and is handled on the video call, never in writing.

I also never ask for remote access to your computer, for you to install anything, or for you to connect your wallet to any website. If someone claiming to do this work asks you for any of those three, you know what you are looking at.

2. What is sent and how it travels

• A copy, never the original. You keep the original file. What you hand over is a copy, and it remains yours throughout.
• The video call, for whatever is secret. A wallet file (wallet.dat, a keystore, an extension’s vault) is already encrypted — with the very password that is missing — and travels by email as an attachment; afterwards I will ask you to delete it from Sent and from the bin. What really is secret — what you remember of your phrase or your passwords — is handled on the video call and never transmitted in writing: not by email, not by messaging, not uploaded anywhere.
• The bare minimum. If the case can be settled with the container’s hash or with an extract of the file, that is what gets sent, not the whole file. Part of the craft is asking for less.
• No public file-sharing services for sensitive material: no open cloud links, no messaging without end-to-end encryption, and never pasted into a chat.

3. Where the work happens

• On infrastructure under my control, with full-disk encryption: my own equipment in most cases and, when one needs more computing power, a dedicated server I rent for that work and wipe when it ends.
• Never on a third-party “recovery service”, nor on a compute marketplace where the machine’s operator is a stranger, nor on cloud storage, nor on artificial intelligence services. If computing power is rented, it is a dedicated server under my control, not a shared platform.
• Uploading the bare minimum: to try passwords an extract of the file is enough, never the private key in clear, and your recovery phrase never arrives in writing at all.
• Without subcontracting. If a case needed outside help, you would be asked for express written authorisation first, naming who and for what. Until you give it, nothing leaves.

4. How many copies exist

The minimum needed to work safely: the working copy and, if the case is long, an encrypted backup so that weeks of compute are not lost to a disk failure. No others. Both are recorded in the case file, with their location, so that the destruction at the end can be verified rather than taken on trust.

5. What is never done with your keys

• Your capital is never moved. Not a test transaction, not a cent of your balance. The only exception, and it is written into the contract, is the collection of my fee: a single transaction, for the amount agreed beforehand, to an address stated in the contract, with its id handed to you alongside the credential so you can check it on chain. The rest stays where it is, under your sole control. I will recommend creating a new wallet and moving the funds, especially if the material may have been exposed at some point, but the decision is yours and the wallet is yours again and yours alone. That authorisation is a condition for taking the case and it is exhausted by that single transaction: it empowers me to do nothing else, at no other time.
• Nothing is signed with your keys, unless you expressly ask me in writing, for a specific purpose you define.
• Your balance is not inspected beyond what is needed to confirm that the recovered access is the right one.
• The recovered password or phrase is not kept once it has been handed over and receipt confirmed.

6. When the work ends (or is abandoned)

When a case closes — with or without a result — every copy of the material is destroyed: secure deletion of the files, of the encrypted containers and of any intermediate derivatives the work produced. You then receive written confirmation, with the date and a list of what was destroyed.

If you decide to stop halfway, the procedure is identical and the deadline the same: within seven days of your notice.

7. What I cannot guarantee you

No custody measure protects against what happens beyond my reach. I cannot vouch for your own machine not being compromised, nor for the copy you send me not having passed through an insecure service already, nor for your phrase not having been exposed before you wrote to me. If you suspect a wallet of yours may be compromised, the right order is to move the funds first and recover whatever is left afterwards.