What Computer Forensics Can Do For You

The hardest part of owning a digital forensic company is not putting the pieces together in an investigation, but getting potential clients to see the real value of digital forensics. In the past few weeks, I have spoken to potential clients that say “wow, you can do that”. Most clients admit that they would have never thought to go after digital data if I didn’t contact them and discuss our services. Maybe I am biased, as I have been in the field for a while and have seen the benefits of doing a digital investigation, but I believe that digital evidence is important to consider in most cases. I have worked hundreds of cases in my career, and some were based solely on the findings found on the computers while in others the computer evidence was used in conjunction with other evidence.

We’ve assisted many clients in corporate and divorce litigation with finding evidence that they would not have known existed without our services.
If you think about the digital age we live in today, we not only deal with computers, but we have the capability to forensically examine cell phones, iPods, video game systems, DVRs, video surveillance systems, as well as any other digital media that contains a storage receptacle. In past cases, we have found relevant data on every one of these devices.

People always relate digital forensics to CSI. Whenever I tell someone what I do, their first reaction is “like CSI”. I explain that’s its similar to CSI but not as pretty. In CSI, they show a person walking up to the suspect’s laptop and by pressing a button all of the smoking gun data pops up on the screen. In the forensic field we call this the “find all evidence button” and as of this writing, I still haven’t found the location of this mysterious button. We usually spend days and weeks going through thousands of emails and search hits trying to piece together clues found on the hard drive.

To find out how Precision Computer Investigations can assist you and your clients visit our website for more information. Please feel free to contact us via email or phone.

Cell Phone Forensics and Internet Infidelity and Divorce

In today’s world a mobile device has almost replaced the computer. Today, more than 3 billion mobile devices are in use worldwide. The growth for cell phones and the growing number of PC-like features being incorporated into their design are fueling the theory that the cell phone is becoming the new laptop.

In any internet infidelity or divorce case it is very important to review the information contained on the guilty parties mobile phone, as long as the consent to search is present. Often times when a computer is shared in the home, the cell phone becomes the mechanism of the affair.

Some of the data that can be recovered from a mobile phone is:

• Call logs (date, time, phone number, duration of call)
• Text messages
• Calendar entries
• Photos/Videos
• Phonebook
• Emails
• Phone Details (phone number, MEI, ESN, PIN, serial number etc.)
• SIM card data

**NOTE- As of this blog posting, it is still very difficult to recover deleted information from cell phones.**

In an interesting twist, an iPhone application was recently released called the Tiger Text (although, the developer swears the application was named before Tiger Wood’s escapades, and was named for tigers because they are sneaky animals). The way the application works is that one someone receives a text, they are prompted to download the TigerText application for free in order to read the message, which is not even sent to the phone, but hosted on the developer’s servers and can be erased whenever the sender wishes. The messages can be deleted on command, or set to automatically vanish after a specific time frame or immediately after reading. The messages cannot be saved, copied, or forwarded.

Contact Precision Computer Investigations (info@precisioninvestigations.net) for further information on Cell Phone Forensics.