Hi, so I’m currently going through a bit of a legal situation. The police have my phone and intend it interrogate it (as they put it) - I’ve of course obliged and provided them with my iPhone passcode.
I’m curious as to if they can recover deleted videos and pictures, it’s an iPhone X, not sure what iOS it runs as I’ve not used it in so long.
Thanks
That depends on how sophisticated they are and how much money they have. Just viewing the contents of the phone from a user’s perspective they can’t recover anything that wouldn’t be visible to you. However, there are forensic tools that can “image” the contents of the phone and save them on a computer for analysis. The are expensive; over $50,000, and take training to use them. And they may be able to jailbreak the phone, which would allow them to look at deleted space. But, since it is SSD blocks of deleted content would not be contiguous, so it would be time-consuming to assemble what is in the deleted space. Thus, it also depends on how motivated they are.
The bottom line is that it is possible that they could recover that content, but unlikely, and they would have to know what they are looking for. We really can’t give a definitive answer.
If you are in the US the police cannot insist that you provide your passcode; that would be a violation of the 5th amendment against self-incrimination, and courts have consistently affirmed the right to not provide your passcode or password.
When you delete videos and photos they are saved in a Recently Deleted album for 30 days. If you did not delete them from this album or they have still been there for less than 30 days they will be still be there. If they are not in the Recently Deleted album they are not recoverable.
Depends. How full is the device? Files get stored in empty storage space. When deleted, they are marked as such but not physically removed. However, if space is needed, newer files will overwrite the space taken by the old ones and hence make them unrecoverable.
If you deleted them less than 30 days ago and did not delete them from the Recently Deleted album they will still be there. If they are not in Recently Deleted they are not recoverable.
Hi, thanks for your reply. On this occasion I’ve happily obliged and given them my password to speed the process up. I’m in the UK. I’m just curious as to what can be recovered.
I have had private pictures and videos on the phone, which I would have deleted - can these be recovered?
Honestly no idea, I haven’t used it for a while - I either factory reset it, or left it as it was when I got a new phone (the screen was wrecked)
I use my phone a lot though, take pics and videos a lot too. Just not sure how it would work if police could recover stuff :/
hey, thanks for both answers. Like I said, I’m happy for them to go looking. I’m just curious about deleted files, images etc - obviously I have a lot of private things on there.
I have a solicitor and they do have a warrant, it’s the UK police.
im assuming that if the password I gave them is incorrect. They’re very limited on what they can do? Also, how many attempts until they have to link it to iCloud?
its really more out of curiosity at this stage as it’s not something I’ve ever experienced before
If you give them an incorrect password and they have secured a court order to access your phone, you're just going to get yourself in more trouble than whatever you're already in. Seems like an unwise thin to do.
Is this even with forensics though? Can’t they access old deleted photos?
In addition to Lawrence's excellent explanation, I'd add that it's also going to depend on why law enforcement is looking at your phone and what they want to find. How motivated are they going to be to go digging?
I recommend you contact a solicitor. I would think, that, if you give the police permission to root around through your phone, they would be able to use anything they can find. If you make them get a warrant, they will have to specify exactly what they are looking for and wouldn't necessarily be able to use random other files.
What can be recovered from an iPhone if you know the password?
