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Price of forensic software

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(@jonathan)
Prominent Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 878
Topic starter  

Has any one else noticed the prices for a new licence of Internet Evidence Finder?

In November 2009 I bought one license for $30.00 Canadian dollars. Right now a new license would cost me $500.00 Canadian dollars. We all need to make a living, but a 1,600% increase?

😯


   
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(@dficsi)
Reputable Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 283
 

He has added some new functionality but I'm not sure it is worth that much of a price hike.

Luckily the upgrade price is "only" £249.99.


   
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(@larryd)
Active Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 13
 

I purchased 3.6 last week for 50CAD. That is an incredible increase for the next version.


   
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(@research1)
Estimable Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 165
 

Are all versions pre-V4 still free for Law enforcement?


   
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Chris_Ed
(@chris_ed)
Reputable Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 314
 

Admittedly it is a large increase, but given it's functionality there are still tools out there which do less and yet cost more. If that is the price for JAD to continue to maintain this useful tool, then fair enough IMO.


   
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erowe
(@erowe)
Estimable Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 144
 

I suspect Jad is trying to figure out what it's worth as well as whether he can make a living from forensic software development. A colleague just told me that Jad is back on general duty because they cut the size of his tech crime unit and he was last man in…


   
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bshavers
(@bshavers)
Estimable Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 211
 

Free is nice, if it exists and you hope it does a good job. If you have to pay, then the software needs to work and do a good job (or why else pay for it?).

With the Portable IEF, I just tested it in a booted WinFE environment and it worked flawlessly. I know it is intended to run on a live system, but when it can be run on a forensically sound booted system, it makes more sense to use it that way as not to alter any data. That just doubled its usefulness as far a I am concerned. Recovering data from Shadow Copies is very nice too.

I have yet to run IEF against a non-Windows evidence drive (such as a Linux machine booted to WinFE), but that should give even more value to IEF when you can run it against non-Windows systems within WinFE.

I personally felt IEF was undercharged for what it did when it was first free considering the work that goes into software development. It wasn't that long ago that everyone was asking how to recover Gmail…IEF cured plenty of headaches and saved many hours of labor. The price is worth it, but only if you need to recover webmail and chats and internet history and facebook and Limewire and IE8 in private urls and Twitter and more. I guess if there are other (cheaper, easier, faster) means to recover the same data, then that would be the choice to make. I don't know of any other utility that does what IEF does.


   
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(@jonathan)
Prominent Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 878
Topic starter  

I don't know of any other utility that does what IEF does.

Me neither. It's a great tool, but I thought the 1600% price increase was worthy of note. Great if you don't have to pay for it yourself, but if you do then a price hike like that has a big impact on your costs.


   
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jaclaz
(@jaclaz)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 5133
 

Just cross-linking to a thread on reboot.pro
http//reboot.pro/13623/

jaclaz


   
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 N1XY
(@n1xy)
Eminent Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 25
 

As a younger person interested in forensics these high prices are a real pain!
I would love to use lots of the tools mentioned on this forum, but the price for the software is almost always preventative.

I understand that this is professional grade software, so they have a reason to charge the prices they do - a 1600% price raise is pretty steep however.

All I can say is thanks to Jad for allowing the program to run in trial mode! Academic versions are also nice too 😉


   
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