Son left home, but left nudes behind

Dear Amy: Our 40-something married son had password-protected some old files on our home computer. We had trouble with our hard drive.

We told our son, but he said he couldn’t quickly remember his passwords to retrieve his own files.

We went ahead and had our computer repaired, and when everything was transferred off and then back onto our restored computer, the files were no longer password-protected.

I peeked at his files. Some of the photos he had saved are of his first dog and various cars.

Most of the photos, however, are the type that parents always tell their offspring NOT to take: nudes of various girls (including the one he would eventually marry) and nudes of himself. What do we do now? I don’t want him to email these files of photos to himself because then they’d potentially be “out there.”

He and his wife (who is in some of the photos) share a computer.

I would like the girlie photos gone from here; the nongirlie ones could stay.

Do I dare selectively delete the racy ones? — Upset Parent

Dear Parent: After you recover from your shock(!) that in his youth your son ignored your well-founded parental advice, you should simply return these files to him.

Your son is an adult. Presumably he no longer needs you to host his personal files on your home computer.

Transfer all of the files (“girlie” and “non-girlie”) to a thumb drive.

Delete them all from your home computer, and give the thumb drive to him.

This is the computer equivalent of packing your son’s yearbooks, photos and old Playboy magazines into a bin and giving the bin to him, to deal with as he chooses.