Family Device Management and Privacy

A household can have dozens of devices across the family, the children and the staff, each with its own accounts and settings. We set them up under one plan, apply sensible privacy and parental controls, keep them updated and backed up, and remove access properly when a nanny, assistant or house manager moves on.

1. 01

   Device setup

   Phones, tablets and laptops enrolled, encrypted, updated and backed up.

2. 02

   Children

   Age-appropriate controls, location sharing and app approval set up with parents.

3. 03

   Household staff

   Staff get their own accounts and devices, never a family member's login.

4. 04

   Offboarding

   Access, shared passwords and devices recovered the day someone leaves.

House managers, assistants, nannies, drivers and housekeepers often need calendars, cameras, door codes, delivery accounts and sometimes a family card. The easy route is to share a family member's login or a common password, and that access tends to outlast the job.

We give staff their own accounts and, where it makes sense, a household-owned phone, with access limited to what the role needs. When someone leaves we follow a written checklist: accounts closed, door and Wi-Fi codes changed, shared vault items rotated, and the device wiped and returned. The family also gets a plain record of who has access to what, which is the first thing to check if something goes missing.

When someone leaves the household, we work through a written list rather than relying on memory.

Departures are rarely planned around IT. A nanny moves on at the end of the school year, an assistant leaves on short notice, a house manager retires after many years. The checklist works the same way in each case, and it is quicker when staff were given their own accounts from the start, because nothing the family uses every day has to change.

We also review staff access once or twice a year, since roles drift and access tends to accumulate.

• Close or disable the staff member's household accounts and remove them from shared calendars and groups.
• Rotate any shared vault items, delivery accounts or subscriptions they used.
• Change door codes, alarm codes, gate codes and the Wi-Fi password they knew.
• Recover and wipe household-owned devices, or remove household apps and accounts from their own phone.
• Remove their access to cameras and smart home apps.
• Record what was changed and when, and give the family a copy to keep with the property record.

Every private client engagement follows the same four stages, whatever the size of the household.

1. 01

   Confidential call

   People, properties and concerns discussed in confidence before anything is written down.

2. 02

   Inventory

   Every account, device, network and property system listed with its owner.

3. 03

   Secure

   Sign-in, recovery, networks and devices fixed in order of risk.

4. 04

   Look after

   Updates, monitoring and a direct line, with records kept current as the household changes.

Private client work usually spans more than one of these areas. Each page below covers a part of the same service.