Do you have that feeling that your spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend, or business partner cannot be trusted? They tell you one thing but you do not think that they are telling you the truth? You see your spouse talking on the phone all the time and wouldn’t tell you who it is? It is hard living with doubt and suspicions. Some people have a hard time going to sleep, and they can’t work or do their job because they’re not just in the mood to do anything else. Some people are natural born detectives who can do their own snooping but there are also those who are very good at hiding the truth from you. If you can’t confirm your fears and suspicions by yourselves then it should be time to hire a private detective or an investigation agency, especially one with the capability of doing mobile device forensics.
A mobile phone is something that most people will not leave behind when they leave for work or go on a trip. Communication is a basic human need, and cell phones have fulfilled our need for instant communication. Our mobile phones can reveal a lot of things about ourselves. It can tell who we have been talking to, how often we have been talking to them, and through text messages it can reveal what things we talk about. Almost all mobile phones nowadays come with a built in camera. Photos taken with the phone’s camera can tell who the user of the phone is, who s/he has been with, where they have been and with data embedded unto pictures, can tell the time, date and the location of the picture. Mobile phones with web browsing and email sending capability can tell the website that the owner of the phone visits it and to where s/he sends the email to, maybe even tell the contents of the email. These types of information and data can be crucial to an investigation. It can also be useful for someone who thinks that their spouse is cheating on them.
Getting data from mobile phones is a complicated process because there are now almost a hundred mobile phone manufacturers in the world. Each manufacturer has their own device architecture, with an operating system that is customized and designed for their device. For several years from 2000 to 2008, Nokia was the leader in the mobile phone market. It has since lost that lead, with companies such as Apple Corporation, Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony and Blackberry grabbing their own share of the mobile phone market, with Samsung and Apple as the current market leaders with a combined market share of 46.5 percent. Apple’s iPhone model uses the IOS operating system while Samsung’s smartphones use Google’s Android operating system. A mobile forensics expert will have to take this into consideration, as there is no software that will work on every phone model on the market. A set of tools developed specifically for the Apple iPhone is available. Some software have been developed by hackers as freeware while there are also proprietary software from vendors such as Oxygen, Paraben, Subrosasoft, Blackbag Technologies, Katana Forensics, and Logicube. The software sold by these vendors cost as much as $700 each and would require training in order to know how to use it.
Law enforcement agencies usually have a computer and mobile device forensic departments with employees trained in the art of mobile device forensics. The employees are forensic experts that are hackers in their own right, creating custom tools for their own use. However they can only work for official investigative task that the department is requested to do and will not help you find out if your husband or wife or boyfriend / girlfriend is cheating. You need to hire a forensic investigator for that purpose.
