How Many Deleted Text Messages Can Be Undeleted From An iPhone?
There are a million reasons why you may need to recover deleted text messages from an iPhone. Perhaps you accidentally deleted important evidence for a court case or you suspect infidelity in a spouse. It may even be a child data you need to recover in order to find out if they are abusing drugs.
If you find yourself in a situation where you need to recover deleted text messages from an iPhone you may be wondering exactly how many messages deleted can be retrieved. This is not a simple question to answer. It's like asking how long is a piece of string. There are just too many variable to know in advance of a physical examination if the device.
A great deal of information can be recovered with a digital forensic examination of a cell phone:
- Web site addresses that have been visited
- Address book
- Settings for mail
- Notes - Preferences
- Calendar
- Text, SMS, and Sext messages
- Pictures and graphics
- Detailed call history that includes the duration and times of calls that have been made and received
- Names and telephone numbers of contacts - Other data that has been deleted from the iPhone
Some of the factors that will determine the results are a data recover are the storage capacity of the unit and the daily usage of the device. When we speak of daily usage we are not only talking about the number of texts. The number of apps, pics and videos can also affect the storage and recoverability of the SMS or texts.
Whenever a text message is deleted it creates open storage space on the internal memory of the device. As new data is entered into the device it can overwrite old deleted data. The new data will look for any open space to write to. This new data does not have to be a new text message. It could be a video or pic or any other type of new data.
There are just too many factors to predict how much deleted data can be recovered before you run a full forensic examination of the device.
When examining an iPhone we have another option of examining the backup files. If the data from the phone has been backed up to your personal computer we can copy those files and examine and recover deleted data from there. This is advantageous because those backed up files will not be affected by new data written into the device itself. minimizing the risk of having deleted text messages overwritten.