Has anybody found a reasonable way (other than photographing the screen) of extracting the live BBM chats/contacts stored within the actual device.
Any help appreciated
If you make a backup of the BlackBerry with the desktop manager/Aceso ect and examine the resulting ipd file it is possible to obtain the BBM contacts.
As for the chats i don't believe these are backed.
The following link is for the ipd file structure from BlackBerry
http//
Hope this helps.
Paul
CCL Forensics
As far as I am aware, there is no way of backing up the BBM chats, Paul is correct that you can still get the contacts from a backup file.
There are occasions when the user selects to backup chats as well. If present, they can be found in home\user\IM\
Either image the device (in mass storage mode), or browse to the folder on the device itself. You can access the on device file explorer by going to media, and then selecting explore (press the blackberry / menu button to get the option to explore).
Please be aware that this tends to be rare, not many people tend to switch on the option to backup their chats.
If the content is important, FTS are able to recover BBM chats, including non active (ie deleted / not visible on the handset). We do this via chip removal.
For more info, please send me a pm, or visit our website http//forensicts.com/
Thanks,
Tom, Forensic Telecommunications Services