The law firm Campaner Law requested my services in relation to various communications made from a mobile phone, in the context of preparing a criminal lawsuit.
The mobile phone belonged to a minor who had allegedly been sexually assaulted by someone in her social circle. The day after the assault occurred, the adult who forced the minor requested that she delete all conversations they had maintained through WhatsApp and other social networks such as Instagram, to which the minor agreed.
Subsequently, the minor told her parents everything that had happened. Given how recent these events were, the parents immediately seized the mobile phone to prevent any use that could jeopardize the recovery of the deleted messages. In this context, the first part of the expert assignment requested of me consisted of the recovery and examination of the deleted information. Fortunately, the parents’ swift action in preventing use of the phone made it possible to recover the deleted content.
This recovery of deleted information would not have been viable had the mobile phone been used normally. There is no common timeframe applicable to all cases when it comes to guaranteeing the recovery of deleted information, as each phone presents different usage patterns. However, as a general rule, if several weeks (2-3) have passed on a phone that has been used daily with regularity, the probability of recovery is minimal, which makes treatment in a specialized laboratory unfeasible.
The above does not exclude the possibility that backups may have been made and stored in each provider’s cloud (Facebook, X/Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.), which would allow access to complete content with forensic guarantees.
After the phone was made available to the specialized forensic laboratory, I was provided with a copy of the extraction and the recovered content. Analysis of this evidence and the various recovered backups revealed the existence of telephone calls, their duration and the terminal’s geolocation at the time they were made, as well as WhatsApp and Instagram conversations exchanged between the minor and the adult who allegedly forced her. Various traces of information were also identified that pointed to the deletion of the conversation they had maintained through Instagram.
The expert report prepared and the list of evidence analyzed were made available to the law firm Campaner Law.
