This is the question we have been asked most, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reassuring one.

It should not still have been there.

Skippers must submit a guest list to the port authorities in the countries we sail. Those authorities require identity-document details for every person aboard. That is why passport details, date of birth and nationality were asked for when you booked.

This is the part that is harder to defend. We had no retention schedule and no automated deletion on our platforms. Once the requirement that justified collecting your details had passed, nothing removed them, because nothing had been built to. Records stayed in the database long after the trip they related to, and dormant accounts stayed open with no mechanism to close them.

That is why this incident reached people who last travelled with us years ago, and in some cases more than a decade ago. It is our failing, not a consequence of the attack itself. A shorter retention period would have meant fewer people affected.

The most important change is already live, and it puts the decision in your hands rather than ours: you can now delete your account and your data yourself, from your profile page, and it takes effect immediately. See How do I delete my account and my data?

Behind that, we have built automated retention rules that will clear personal data on a set schedule for each category, rather than at anyone's discretion. The retention periods are going through final sign-off before those rules are switched on — but you do not need to wait for them, because the deletion above is yours to use today.

A narrow set of records has to remain. We are legally required to keep guest lists submitted to port authorities, and to retain financial records for tax purposes, each for as long as the law requires. Everything outside that can go.

The same failing applied there, and Ski Week holds its own separate records with its own delete button on theskiweek.com. If you received two notices, deleting one account does not touch the other. Ski Week's answers are in its own help centre at help.theskiweek.com.