# Privacy and recovery

Forge work can contain personal, commercial and operational information. Handle access, deletion and recovery requests with a clear target and a named owner. A request to “get it back” is not enough to safely alter live work.

## Protect access first

Use individual accounts and workspace roles. Check the workspace, person and requested level of access before granting membership. Remove a person's workspace access when it is no longer needed; do not share a password, reset link or privileged session as a shortcut.

If a request involves someone else's information, keep the scope narrow. Identify the workspace and the exact task, file, record or account before inspecting or changing anything.

## Separate recovery from overwrite

For a missing file or record, first establish what is missing, where it belonged and what outcome is required. Review a recovered copy before replacing current material. Forge's table recovery path requires administrator authority and a complete snapshot for historic identity recovery; it refuses incomplete restoration of governed privacy metadata. That protection is deliberate.

If a deletion, access problem or possible data exposure has unclear scope, pause the change and involve the responsible administrator. Preserve the evidence needed to understand what happened.

## Prompts to try

```
For [workspace], identify the exact file or record named [target], its current location and the safest read-only checks before any recovery action. Do not change anything.
```

```
Draft a recovery plan for [target]. Include the owner, source snapshot, checks before restore, and how we will avoid overwriting current work. Wait for my confirmation before acting.
```

## Next steps

Keep access reviews and recovery decisions attached to the work they affect. If you only need the original material, start with [Files and storage](/help/files); if access itself is changing, use [Add a teammate](/help/add-teammates).

See [Add a teammate](/help/add-teammates) and [Files and storage](/help/files).