There seems to be a ton of mobile forensic software out there that will retrieve deleted text and sms messages from phones if they are done from the phone's texting app. What about apps such as TextNow or any of the hundreds of other texting apps. Is there an local storage of these texts messages or would an investigator need to get them directly from the app company?
'TextNow' is not very common here in the UK so have no idea how the app data is stored, however I would have thought that data such as messaging logs are saved locally on the device (assuming it is a smartphone) in SQLite databases, similar to the likes of Viber etc.
Have you extracted from the device as of yet?
Have you been able to locate any data files relating to the apps of note in the file system?
Couple of options you have to start with
Magnet Forensics Dynamic App Finder
http//
Obtain a Court order
https://
There seems to be a ton of mobile forensic software out there that will retrieve deleted text and sms messages from phones if they are done from the phone's texting app. What about apps such as TextNow or any of the hundreds of other texting apps. Is there an local storage of these texts messages or would an investigator need to get them directly from the app company?
All the apps store their data in different ways, some use databases, some use their own proprietaty formats. Of course some apps don't store anything at all on the persistent memory of the device. It is very important to check exactly which version of the app the tools support.
XRY supports TextNow version 1.1.1 for Android for example.
Thanks everyone. No I haven't done much on forensics for smart phones yet. That's what we are working on now, it seems they wanted to save the best for last.
fredjclaus data maybe stored on the mobile's removal memory cards.