2nd hand devices
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Hi I don't know if there is anyone with any technical knowledge on here but I would appreciate any advice. Husband arrested one year ago for IOC. 2 phones taken (one was used for work only). No indication of when devices will be returned. He bought both of them 2nd hand from EBay. I believe they would have been wiped before he bought them? If not, and something is found 'hidden' on the device (heard from some one on here that a file had been found hidden behind a calculator app on husbands phone ... blows my mind!) would the forensics be able to pinpoint the dates to before my husband bought them?
I am currently over thinking every scenario especially since the OIC told me that cases in this area aren't taking a year (yet here we are one year down the line).
I am currently over thinking every scenario especially since the OIC told me that cases in this area aren't taking a year (yet here we are one year down the line).
Thanks Lee ... OH needs to check his EBay account then to ascertain the date he bought them. One of his friends bought one of them for him (that's going to be very awkward asking him!)
Hey,
I just had to chime in with some knowledge. If it's any remotely modern android phone, a full factory reset does not retain any data usable by forensics. That's just what a few experts in the field have told me
I just had to chime in with some knowledge. If it's any remotely modern android phone, a full factory reset does not retain any data usable by forensics. That's just what a few experts in the field have told me
Thanks babyblue ... will ask him to check his eBay account so he's got answers ready just in case.
Baby blue... sorry I don't know anything about phones. Is an android phone the same as an iPhone? Just wondering if data can be recovered from a wiped iPhone 6
So he'll get away with it then!!!
Thank you to everyone for responding.
Lost everything I really think that your last comment on here is completely out of order-this forum is for support and advice and although I appreciate that you are hurt and angry we all know that mistakes can be made by the police regarding devices and people are innocent until proven guilty.
Please don't add to this person's stress by making unnecessary and unhelpful comments.
Please don't add to this person's stress by making unnecessary and unhelpful comments.
Seaside I was referring to my ex Getting away with it because the evidence is on a wiped iPhone. I never made any comment about the poster's circumstances
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Lost everything you made a sweeping statement with no mention of your specific situation so it appeared that you were commenting on the original post.
I want to come in with a few points, as someone with a computer science background and since our knock have been reaching out to forensics experts just to understand what is going on.
Any remotely modern smartphones once factory reset is highly unlikely to retain any data. It's just how the technology works. In the cases of iioc many users will delete what they've seen. Weather that be because they don't want to get caught or they genuinely didn't want to see the content. To law enforcement, the intent does not matter.
When images and videos are deleted, you can't recover them. What law enforcement do infavt find are thumbnails, small versions of the deleted image. These are the small pictures you see in your gallery app before you click on the image. These do not get deleted when deleting the original image.
So what happens in many cases, and I do genuinely believe a lot of the people caught had this happen to them: They join in on some group chats on Kik(mainly), groups aren't generally advertised as being a place to share illegal content, links are posted up on forums asking people to chat or share completely legal pictures. After a time the group chat gets overrun with people sharing illegal material. Then if you thought "This is illegal let's get out of here and delete the app", it's too late, those thumbnails are saved on your phone to later be used against you by law enforcement.
I'm by no means condoning people who go out of their way to find these images, but it is beyond easy to have a lot of evidence on your device you never wanted to be there in the first place and law enforcement could not care less, nor will they go through the effort to finding out if the person intended to look at the images or not.
On a side note, once a video file is deleted it is impossible to recover, so if any law enforcement is saying they found video files on a phone that your person said they had deleted then law enforcement isn't being truthful.
Just wanted to shed some light on the ins and outs of technology and this whole journey
Any remotely modern smartphones once factory reset is highly unlikely to retain any data. It's just how the technology works. In the cases of iioc many users will delete what they've seen. Weather that be because they don't want to get caught or they genuinely didn't want to see the content. To law enforcement, the intent does not matter.
When images and videos are deleted, you can't recover them. What law enforcement do infavt find are thumbnails, small versions of the deleted image. These are the small pictures you see in your gallery app before you click on the image. These do not get deleted when deleting the original image.
So what happens in many cases, and I do genuinely believe a lot of the people caught had this happen to them: They join in on some group chats on Kik(mainly), groups aren't generally advertised as being a place to share illegal content, links are posted up on forums asking people to chat or share completely legal pictures. After a time the group chat gets overrun with people sharing illegal material. Then if you thought "This is illegal let's get out of here and delete the app", it's too late, those thumbnails are saved on your phone to later be used against you by law enforcement.
I'm by no means condoning people who go out of their way to find these images, but it is beyond easy to have a lot of evidence on your device you never wanted to be there in the first place and law enforcement could not care less, nor will they go through the effort to finding out if the person intended to look at the images or not.
On a side note, once a video file is deleted it is impossible to recover, so if any law enforcement is saying they found video files on a phone that your person said they had deleted then law enforcement isn't being truthful.
Just wanted to shed some light on the ins and outs of technology and this whole journey
That's very interesting. So if someone downloaded video files only and deleted them immediately would there still be a thumbnail or would the evidence be gone ?
I've seen cases reported where they say that the images or videos aren't accessible but charges are still made
I've seen cases reported where they say that the images or videos aren't accessible but charges are still made
Deleted videos also keep a thumbnail. If it was on a PC then it is possible to recover deleted files due to PCs handling data differently.
It becomes much more confusing when looking through data which is deleted. Every file has an identifier known as a hash value. These has values are logged on an international database for iioc, so if a person downloads a file that is known to these databases it is easier to know what that file was, but without the actual image being viewable I don't know how law enforcement handle that situation.
Feel free to PM any questions and I'm happy to share as much knowledge on the topic as I've learned so far, because it's so much more nuanced than it seems in the papers
It becomes much more confusing when looking through data which is deleted. Every file has an identifier known as a hash value. These has values are logged on an international database for iioc, so if a person downloads a file that is known to these databases it is easier to know what that file was, but without the actual image being viewable I don't know how law enforcement handle that situation.
Feel free to PM any questions and I'm happy to share as much knowledge on the topic as I've learned so far, because it's so much more nuanced than it seems in the papers
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My ex had an iPhone. Even though he had done a factory reset, thankfully the police were able to recover a lot.