I am working a case that is currently in court and the judge has asked that I follow up on a situation or try and get an explanation regarding BEBO messages.
The complainant has made a formal complaint of assault and the case has ended up in court. Shortly after the defendant was arrested, the complainant contacted him via Bebo and stated that she was going to get him no matter what and that if she didn't win this one she would keep lying to the Police until he was convicted.
The defendant has pleaded not guilty and has produced this message in court. The complainant admits she sent the message on Bebo but not the entire message. She claims the defendant has added text to the message.
I was present when the message was printed from Bebo. My question is, once a message has been sent and received, can the message be changed by the recipient. I have done tests with regard to this and haven't found a way yet. Maybe someone out there knows how.
Cheers
Mike Chappell
New Zealand Forensics
Hi Mike,
Yes, you can change a message by manipulating the "DOM" (Document Object Model) of the web page. The DOM is the browser-parsed version of the HTML source code of the website in question.
There are Firefox Plugins available which enable you to manipulate the DOM, one of which is called
I threw togeteher a quick screenshot showing how easy it is to manipulate a web page/message
Regards
Dave
It is probably too late to get the logs from BEBO, because to be admissible you will have to go through the MUA, but NZ legislation may be slightly different to AU.
Can you get hold of the defendant’s and complainant’s computers? I would be looking at the sender’s computer carefully (in case it was used to send the message).