How police recover WhatsApp messages? Read about forensic methods of data recovery.
To understand and learn How police recover WhatsApp messages? you must know- how data is stored and what happens to the deleted data from storage devices then only you can understand the process of forensic data extraction in both mobile and computer. Just read this article to understand in detail.
Mainly we have two types of storage technologies with us- one is Chip-based and the other is disk-based. Chip-based storage systems are memory cards and SSD’s, while disk-based is our hard drive. But in both the storage types the deleted data remains on in the storage device until and unless the data gets rewritten. Just understand this with an example: you have 2 GB of data which you have deleted 1 year ago, but the storage device was 500 GB, then there are the high chances that the data is still present on the device since the space on which data was stored is not re-written by other files.
When you just delete any file or folder the particular file id is marked by the operating system as “deleted” and the data is only hidden by the operating system, but still it will be present on the storage device until that space is re-occupied by any other file.
How android data recovery works?
So our android devices have mainly small chips in them termed as- eMMC, eMCP, UFS chips. While most phones nowadays use UFS based storage system. Since these are also a type of storage device and hence they also work the same and the data you delete on these devices are still not deleted until space is re-occupied by another file. The deleted data on these storage chips can be stored easily by using some hardware and software. Some of the hardware and software are present only for security agencies and while some of them are publicly present for civil use.
Methods of android data recovery.
Basically, there are two types of recovery methods:
- Chip level recovery
- And, software level recovery
While chip-based data recovery is more efficient and powerful in comparison to software level recovery, but this type of recovery is only beneficial in the case of broken android phones since the software level recovery won’t work because the android phone is dead. In chip level recovery the storage chip is taken out of the motherboard of the android phone and hence the specialized person can perform this task, but if you are a normal technician and wants to recover the deleted android data then just use some forensic software’s to recover the deleted data.
There is some powerful forensic software for professional android data recovery. These tools can recover the old deleted files of the android phone, even these software can recover the deleted and old WhatsApp messages also.
What are UFI devices and how they are used to recover android data?
Well UFI devices are some kind of devices which are used to connect the mobile storage ships to the computer and these devices come with their own software’s and by using these devices you can plug the storage chip in inside them and then you have to connect the of the device to the computer to start the recovery process. The UFI devices are often used in the case of dead mobile phones; therefore we can say that we can recover the dead and broken android data with the help of UFI devices.
But to use a device to recover the data from chips such as eMMC, eMCP, or UFS chips then you must have some special mobile repairing tools, and also the knowledge of mobile repairing is required.
Click here to read about the UFI box in details
Is it possible to recover deleted data of the android phone?
Yes, it is possible to recover deleted android data but there are some conditions, such that the data should not be corrupt, or neither the deleted data has been overwritten by other data. If you want to recover the data from the mobile phone then you must know the chip level repairing or you should know forensic tools.
Best apps to recover android data.
The honest answer is that there are no apps present right now which can perform data recovery in your android device, there are some apps present on the play store that promise to recover the deleted data but all those things are a scam, you can personally try those apps and I am sure that those apps will not work for you also. You have to use some forensic tools such as Full mobile forensics, to recover the real deleted data.
A best forensic tool to recover android deleted messages and chats.
There are many forensic tools for data extraction and recovery but the best known forensic software for data recovery in my opinion is Full mobile forensics. This tool is one of the best forensic tools which can recover your videos, images, messages, and even it can also recover the deleted WhatsApp chats of more than a year’s old.
The size of this software is more than 2 GB, and to use this software you must have a working mobile phone.
How police and crime branch recovers deleted WhatsApp chats and messages?
Police, crime branch, and security agencies also use the same techniques to recover the data from the mobile phone, but they have an upper hand in this field since they have access to the special forensic tools and software’s to recover the data. Much industry-level data recovery software is not available for public use but is available for professional use only.
In case of a crime, police take away the mobile phones of the suspects for only a few hours or a day and they just make clones of the suspect’s phone. Here cloning simply refers to that the storage device of the suspect’s mobile is copied bit by bit means they copy the full data of the suspect’s mobile to another mobile device. The cloning can be done only at the chip level and by using the UFI box.
Once the clone is ready, it also contains the deleted data which can be easily recovered by the methods used above. If you want to read the full article on data recovery on a computer, click here.
Can WattsApp share user’s data with law improvement authorities? WattsApp legal data sharing policy.
WhatsApp is known for its end to end data security layer, and once it may be hard for anyone to retrieve the WhatsApp chats, but wait there is the policy of WhatsApp, according to which the giant messaging company can legally share your data and information with the law enforcement or in another word WhatsApp can share your data with the police and forensics.
Just have a look at the below image to understand the legal privacy policy of WhatsApp, or click here to read the official notice of WhatsApp.
In the above image, you can clearly see that WhatsApp is revealing that they can help the cops or law enforcement if required in case of any critical cases.
In any criminal case, (if required) police can send WhatsApp a legal notice to share the user data however, this data sharing policy may also depend on your countries domestic policies, and law and order.
How to recover deleted and old WhatsApp chats? Step by step guide.
Before heading towards the WhatsApp chats recovery process, we have to understand the working of WhatsApp. When you just message someone or you just receive messages from someone, these chats and messages are stored in the WhatsApp databases, which you can also see on your mobile phone by going in file manager/ WhatsApp/ databases.
You can see in the below picture which is the WhatsApp database of my mobile phone:
You can see the most recent database is of 2 February. If I just copy the “mgstore.db.crypt12” file and then I just open WhatsApp and delete some messages then WhatsApp will also update its database, then if you want to restore the deleted messages just delete the current database “mgstore.db.crypt12” which has a date of 2 February and just paste the previous “mgstore.db.crypt12” database file which we have copied and after doing this you will be able to recover your deleted chats.
Well, the above method was only a demo, so now you understood that this database stores the WhatsApp chats and you can also see that there are 6-7 database files with different dates, this means that WhatsApp automatically creates new databases and deletes the old databases, and this is the point where we can use forensic tools to recover those deleted WhatsApp databases and if we want to recover the messages from those databases then you have to paste that database in the database folder and just rename the folder, for example, mgstore-2021-01-27.1.db.crypt to “mgstore.db.crypt12” don’t forget to delete the current “mgstore.db.crypt12” database file. So you have to remove the date only and then the chats till the date “2021-01-27” will be recovered.
Is it possible to recover deleted data from apples ios phones?
Yes, the iPhone’s data can also be breached. There is a hype of apple ios that these phones are the best in the world in terms of security but do not be fooled, these phones can also be breached. In the case of the chipset level, the data from ios can be easily recovered by using UFI type device.
So now I think that you have learned something from this article, if this article was helpful for you then do not forget to follow us on our various social media platforms.
Conclusion
It’s very clear that the online world is not private anymore and privacy is a hoax. In the case of WhatsApp, it’s not very easy to extract/recover user data if the data has been deleted a long time ago, but if the data is not deleted or is deleted currently, then in those cases the data can be recovered by using some sort of tricks.
If your data is too much confidential and you also fear the government spying on you then do not share your information’s on WhatsApp, since the data can be recovered in some cases or the police can also issue a legal notice for WhatsApp to seek the user’s data.