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This site is a technical knowledge base. It describes which tools I use in my work, how I put them to work and why I make certain choices. It is trade content, not a case report and not an offer of services.

What you will not find here
No cases, no parties, no courts, no case numbers, no lawyers, no dates by which a file could be recognised. No findings either: what I established in an investigation belongs in the report to the court, not on a website. As a gerechtsdeskundige, a court-appointed expert under Belgian law, I am bound by the professional secrecy of article 458 of the Belgian Criminal Code and by the duty of discretion in article 15 of the code of conduct for court-appointed experts (Dutch text; Belgian legislation has no official English version). Those obligations do not stop when an assignment ends.

About the figures

The volumes, turnaround times, costs and counts on this site come from my practice, but they have been mixed deliberately. No combination of numbers on a page describes a single real case. They are here to show orders of magnitude, because an explanation of method without figures is worth little. They are not here to reconstruct a case, and that is how they should be read.

Why it works that way

A case is recognisable even without names. A sector, a data volume, a month and a region together form a fingerprint: illegible to an outsider, immediately clear to anyone who was in the matter. So I avoid those combinations, even where no name appears anywhere.

If you do recognise something

Do you believe a page can be traced back to your case or to you? Let me know at [EMAIL]. I will take the page offline as quickly as possible and amend or remove it, without your having to explain why.

No advice
What you read here is a description of working method, not legal or technical advice about your situation, and it creates no relationship whatsoever between you and me. An appointment as a gerechtsdeskundige is made by a judge, not through this site.

Corrections
These pages describe what worked for me, not what the one correct method is. If a tool behaves differently for you, if a rate is out of date, or if you know a better approach: let me know at the same address. Rates and version numbers age faster than the text around them.

Who writes this

Joachim Ally, gerechtsdeskundige, entered in the Belgian national register of court-appointed experts under number EXP9491751, domain information and communication technology.

This knowledge base stands apart from ronagold.be, which describes my professional practice. That site is about the work; this one is about the tools.