This is the first episode in a series of interviews titled ‘Not Just A Pretty Face’ that we’ll be posting over the next few months. These videos will feature interviews with our staff — primarily our drivers — letting you get to better know the people you see in your law firms and companies everyday. We’re lucky to have some truly nice and remarkable people working for us and we wanted to give you a chance to see another side of them.
Our first video is an interview with the friendly and always cheerful Mike. Below you’ll find the youtube video embedded as well as a link to the interview on another video hosting site if youtube is unavailable for you. If viewing the youtube video, we suggest pressing the ‘HQ’ button after pressing play so you can view the video in high quality.
Last week we posted an update talking about the epidemic of cyber-bullying. Largely based upon psychological assault, cyber-bullying has been spreading through our school systems rapidly. The impact on some children has been so strong that, not only are they afraid to go to school, in some extreme cases treatment is required for a variety of mental disorders including anxiety and depression. In the most extreme cases children are even committing suicide as a result of the cyber-bullying. While our last post served as an introduction to the serious nature of this epidemic, this week we want to talk about the impact our services — in particular cell phone forensics and computer forensics — can have on these cases.
An article from the Star-Ledger was posted on NJ.com on Monday that discussed the need for strong protection against cyber-bullying for our children. For many of us, growing up we found bullying to be almost entirely face-to-face, regardless of whether you were on the receiving or giving end. While technology clearly brings many benefits and has provided an invaluable learning tool for many, it has also brought some negative and devastating repercussions:
Death threats are being made in text messages and e-mails and anonymous notes.
…
And now there is another complication: technology. In face-to-face bullying, victims know their tormentors. In the murky world of the internet, faceless bullies can do untold damage to reputations and psyches. And, unlike other abuse, cyber-bullying doesn’t stop when the school bell rings at the end of the day.
It’s no longer easy for these children to escape from this torture. It may not be a single bully they’re facing, but a mob of faceless, anonymous voices looking to be as ruthless as possible without any fear, and maybe knowledge, of the consequences. While education needs to be more strongly presented as a way to work towards prevention, there are ways of easily identifying abuses from these seemingly anonymous sources.
As we have noted in the past, not only does your computer store and track bits of information you’re unaware of, it also keeps your files and history even when you “delete” them by emptying the Recycle Bin on your desktop. Your emails, IMs, web browser history, cookies, passwords and more can be retrieved with ease. Some of the files we can retrieve will be years old, files you’ve probably forgotten you ever had. We’ve been able to retrieve partial and whole messages sent through MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites and some of these messages contained incriminating evidence.
A very high percentage of children have cell phones now, most able to send text messages and many able to access email and the internet. Some phones like the iPhone and BlackBerry have applications and programs devoted to messaging and communication, allowing you to communicate with others 24/7, for better or worse. This also means that cell phones have become a goldmine for finding incriminating files for all sorts of crimes and wrongdoings.
For example, the iPhone takes a screenshot every time you press the ‘Home’ key and stores that screenshot on the phone. While this is done so that applications can startup faster and without seeming to delay, it also allows us to see many of the things you’ve seen on your phone. Emails, text messages, web sites, videos, calendar info, your contacts and just about anything else you’ll use your phone for can be found in these screenshots. From a cheating spouse’s secret affair to corporate fraud and theft to child pornography, cell phone forensics has allowed us to find incriminating evidence to a wide variety of offenses. With the increase in cyber-bullying this means many of the bully’s actions can be found through a fast cell phone analysis.
One of the hardware-based tools that we use for cell phone forensics allows us to image and analyze a cell phone within minutes. While the storage space on cell phones continues to grow, they still have only a small fraction of what the average personal computer does in hard drive capacity. The smaller size allows for faster imaging which means, when called into a law firm, corporation or school, we can have call logs, text messages, picture messages, videos, web browsing history and more within minutes.
Ultimately both cell phone forensics and computer forensics allows us to frequently find evidence of cyber-bullying. Whether it’s found in text messages, instant messages, emails, photos, videos or fake profiles, we have the tools to defensibly locate and present the facts in any cyber-bullying case, from middle schools to large corporations.
Captain Forensics Fights Cyber-Bullying Last week we put up a post on cyber-bullying. This is a terrible trend impacting children around the world in very serious, and even deadly, ways. While our blog......
What’s inside your child’s cell phone? (Part 2) A follow up to ‘Cell Phones for Children – A “Catch 22”?‘ Some of you may remember “Joe” from our last blog post and his experience with cell phone......
Computer Forensics vs. eDiscovery: What Does Your Case Need? At a recent legal technology trade show I was overwhelmed at how many computer forensics and electronic discovery (aka eDiscovery or E-Discovery) companies are out there peddling services. I......
Last week we put up a post on cyber-bullying. This is a terrible trend impacting children around the world in very serious, and even deadly, ways. While our blog posts here will focus more on the serious sides of these issues, we also have an outlet that lets people learn about these issues through a quick, easy to understand and fun method: comics. We’ve started a comic series titled “Captain Forensics” that deals mostly with computer forensics, cell phone forensics and eDiscovery topics and lets people of all ages learn while having some fun. Our most recent comic on Captain Forensics is beginning to deal with cyber-bullying and how cell phone forensics and computer forensics can help.
Captain Forensics is setup in a manner similar to our blog, where you can sign up to receive updates through your email. On both this site and Captain Forensics, the email updates box is on the lower right side of the page. By signing up to receive updates by email you’ll always have the most up-to-date postings in a very convenient location. You can read Captain Forensics by either clicking on this sentence or the image below.
For those of you who are local to us in the New Jersey area, these topics are often hitting close to home. A recent article in the Courier Post titled “Teens Caught ‘Sexting’ Face Porn Charges“states:
“This week in Spotsylvania, Va., two boys, ages 15 and 18, were charged with solicitation and possession of child porn with intent to distribute after an investigation found they sought nude pictures from three juveniles — one in elementary school.”
Clearly this is a much more serious problem than most people believe. The legal consequences these children face will stay with them for much of their lives. Cyber-bullying, ’sexting’ and other topics involving children and cell phones or the internet are showing a strong need for education and communication between authority figures and children as, the Courier Post article ends with:
“He required each to do community service and to ask peers if they knew sexting was a crime. They told O’Malley they surveyed 225 teens; 31 knew.”
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Related posts:
Cyber-Bullying: How Cell Phone and Computer Forensics Help (Part 2) Last week we posted an update talking about the epidemic of cyber-bullying. Largely based upon psychological assault, cyber-bullying has been spreading through our school systems rapidly. The impact on......
What’s inside your child’s cell phone? (Part 2) A follow up to ‘Cell Phones for Children – A “Catch 22”?‘ Some of you may remember “Joe” from our last blog post and his experience with cell phone......
As you may recall, last time we introduced you to some real “characters” and how they prefer to wipe their data, or at least attempt to physically destroy it. After witnessing the various data destruction methods, we wanted to follow up with our own recommendations for destroying or wiping data. While the methods caught on tape might appear to be more fun, these methods of physical destruction may not be the most practical, especially if you would like to reuse the hard drive.
We recommend using disk-cleaning utilities. There are many software programs from which to choose, and many of these packages use a handful of different methods. Some of these packages allow a user to “wipe” only the free space on a hard drive while other programs wipe all data on your hard drive. Depending on the needs, a user may desire one method over another.
Wiping Deleted Files
Once a file is deleted it is not accessible from within the Windows operating system, but can be recovered by using forensic data recovery tools. This is easily accomplished because the Windows OS doesn’t actually remove the deleted files, but instead simply changes a small portion of the file which tells the operating system that the space this file currently occupies is free to be overwritten and used by other files if the space is needed. If a user wants to remove these files permanently, they can select a program that wipes their deleted files. The software accomplishes this by overwriting the deleted files with volumes of random data which renders the “deleted files” unrecoverable.
Wiping All Data
These programs work by overwriting your entire hard drive with a series of 1s, 0s or random data depending on which program and which method is used. Most of the methods used rely on overwriting data with a series of characters and then erasing these characters. Some of these methods even repeat this 3, 7 or even 35 times. These methods may be commonly referred to as DoD3 wipe, DoD7 Wipe and Gutmann 35 wipe respectively.
The positives to using a DOD or Gutmann wipe are many. First, one can reuse this drive and not discard it, which means you will be acting more environmentally friendly by keeping the hard drive out of a landfill. Second, the user saves money by not having to buy a replacement hard drive. A third benefit is eliminating the need for expensive hardware as these methods use software instead, some of which is free. The fourth benefit is software wiping is also relatively fast and doesn’t require driving out into the country to shoot holes through your data. Lastly, in this economy, most people aren’t too eager to spend the money to rent a jackhammer or log splitter!
Another method of wiping data is called “degaussing.” Some of you may be familiar with the term degaussing because of the degaussing option on older CRT computer monitors. Degaussing deals with changing the magnetic structure of something and when you would degauss a CRT computer monitor, the screen would shake and provide hours of entertainment for the bored, young or slightly inebriated.
Degaussing is successful for wiping hard drives because data is stored to hard drives by making small areas change their magnetic alignment. When degaussed, it leaves these small areas, and therefore your data, in random patterns. When degaussed properly there won’t be enough information left to reconstruct the original data. Degaussing is normally done by using a machine built specifically for this purpose and can be completed within a very short period of time.
The primary downside to degaussing your hard drives is it can be just as wasteful as the physical destruction methods. Once you degauss a hard drive it will be rendered unusable because the changes to this magnetic media leave the storage system damaged and the drive unusable. So, while degaussing is efficient and gets the job done, it’s not the most environmentally or economically friendly method of wiping your data. The cost of these degaussing machines is not only well out of the average computer users budget, but also more than most companies would ever consider spending. Plus, you still have to buy another hard drive to get back up an running.
We hope you find this post helpful. Thank you in advance for thinking a little more “green” and we hope you are able to benefit from our money saving ideas when deleting data. We appreciate you joining us! If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in comments section of our blog at njlcblog.net!
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Rating: 4.8/5 (17 votes cast)
Related posts:
Data Destruction: The Fun Way (Videos) Last week we posted an entry asking “How Do You Delete Your Data?” Whether it resides on hard drives or disks, there are many ways of destroying your data.......
How Do You Delete Your Data? Within the next week we’re going to be broadcasting a special on different techniques for truly getting rid of your data. There are many techniques, some of which are......
Last week we posted an entry asking “How Do You Delete Your Data?” Whether it resides on hard drives or disks, there are many ways of destroying your data. No matter what you call it — “wiping” or “deleting” or “destroying” — it is helpful to know how data is handled both in its creation and removal as well as the different techniques to not only wipe your data, but also retrieve data when your court case relies on it.
This week we’re covering the deletion aspect. We interviewed some true characters on their various methods of wiping or destroying their data and we recorded the results on video. We found these individuals and their techniques interesting, to say the least. You’ll probably be surprised which of these methods are actually effective in destroying data. We’ve embedded the YouTube videos and provided a link to another video source below each video in case YouTube is blocked on your computer.
In the upcoming weeks, New Jersey Legal will follow up these interviews with our recommendations for wiping data. For now, enjoy the video interviews below…
How Do You Delete Your Data? Within the next week we’re going to be broadcasting a special on different techniques for truly getting rid of your data. There are many techniques, some of which are......
New Jersey Legal’s Recommendations For Wiping Data As you may recall, last time we introduced you to some real “characters” and how they prefer to wipe their data, or at least attempt to physically destroy it.......
Not Just A Pretty Face (Part 1) This is the first episode in a series of interviews titled ‘Not Just A Pretty Face’ that we’ll be posting over the next few months. These videos will feature......
Within the next week we’re going to be broadcasting a special on different techniques for truly getting rid of your data. There are many techniques, some of which are more effective than others. For now we want to know, “How do you wipe your data?”
What do you do with your hard drives, thumb drives, CDs, DVDs, floppy disks, etc when you’re done with them? What have you found works and doesn’t work? Do you have any interesting stories pertaining to data deletion?
Share your ideas, thoughts or stories in the comments below and keep an eye out for next week’s special!
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Rating: 4.7/5 (13 votes cast)
Related posts:
Data Destruction: The Fun Way (Videos) Last week we posted an entry asking “How Do You Delete Your Data?” Whether it resides on hard drives or disks, there are many ways of destroying your data.......
New Jersey Legal’s Recommendations For Wiping Data As you may recall, last time we introduced you to some real “characters” and how they prefer to wipe their data, or at least attempt to physically destroy it.......
Some of you may remember “Joe” from our last blog post and his experience with cell phone forensics. He bought his children cell phones and, due to changes in their behavior, he became nervous and started “snooping” into their phones when he could. Never finding anything stored on the phones led him to believe the data was being deleted for a reason – and not a good one. Joe hired New Jersey Legal for our cell phone forensics services and in the process discovered his children were involved with guns and sex.
This past Tuesday, Fox News reported on some Pennsylvania high school students that are being charged with child pornography — not because they’ve been involved with an underground kiddie porn ring, but instead because three girls between the ages of 14 and 15 took nude or semi-nude photos of themselves with their cell phones and sent the photos to three male classmates between the ages of 16 and 17.
Police say that high school officials found the pornographic photos when they confiscated the phone of a student who had broken school rules by using it during school hours. Police were brought in, leading to other phones being confiscated and other photos being found.
But imagine if they hadn’t. Imagine if this child hadn’t been using his phone during school that day. No one found out and the photos were still being taken and distributed. Could be your children, could be your neighbor’s child but you wouldn’t know because your children are hiding it from you.
I don’t think any parent wants to snoop on their children. In fact, maybe you shouldn’t. But you should at least make it clear to your children that you can — and will — snoop if you have any reason to. For New Jersey Legal to make an image of your child’s phone, all we need is about the time it’ll take your children to watch an episode of Family Guy. Once we have a forensic image of their cell phone we can find whatever there may be on there that they don’t want you to see. That’s a fact that you and your children need to know.
What do you think? Is it better to play it safe and check or is it better to simply hope they’re not doing anything you would disapprove of? Is it better to enforce regular “check-ups” on usage, or is it better to wait and see? Keep in mind that if any child porn is found on any household cell phone or computer, everyone who has used that computer is subject to investigation by the authorities. Whatever your opinion is, we look forward to hearing from you in the comments below!
For those of you who are either current customers or blog members, we do offer a free initial consultation for any concerns or questions you may have with cell phone forensics or computer forensics involving clients or family members. You can email us at answers@njlcblog.net. If it’s an emergency please call us at 856-910-0202.
And yes, “Sexting” is the most ridiculous word the media has made up so far this year.
Cyber-Bullying: How Cell Phone and Computer Forensics Help (Part 2) Last week we posted an update talking about the epidemic of cyber-bullying. Largely based upon psychological assault, cyber-bullying has been spreading through our school systems rapidly. The impact on......
Welcome.
This is the first post of many. We feel it’s a good idea to begin this thing by explaining what our intentions are for this blog. By doing so it’ll help us stay on track with it and help you determine whether you want to stick around for a while or not.
Why do we have a blog?
While we believe our company site is fantastic and full of great information, it lacks the ability to have conversations and communicate with our clients and other persons interested in these topics. In our industry, technology is a constantly evolving force and a great way to stay on top of it and educated about it is by engaging in conversations that are relevant to these interests.
What is this blog about?
Each of these blog posts hopes to become a conversation with our post being the starting point for you to jump in on. As a company we provide a wide reaching selection of services and we’ll discuss these things as that’s what we know best. We’ll also include links to articles or other blogs that we’ve found interesting as you may also enjoy these links and hopefully we can create some conversations about the discussed topics while we’re at it.
How can you participate?
As this website begins to take form we have two ways for you to be involved with more options to come along the way. The first way to participate is to comment on our blog posts and create or contribute to an already existing conversation. We’ve made it very simple for you to register on our site, even allowing you to upload a picture of yourself or your firm’s logo that will be displayed next to your name on your comments. It will truly take only 3 minutes of your time to register, allowing you to comment and converse on any topics on this site. The second way to participate is to subscribe to our RSS feed. There are many ways to do this and many web browsers now give you the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds from within the browser. An RSS feed is a simple list of our blog posts that gets updated on your end when we update the blog on our end, allowing you to see our new posts and add your comments as soon as the blog post has been posted.
That’s all for now, we hope you’ll enjoy our blog and visit it often!
