Cellular Forensics Archives - Page 5 of 18

Don’t be a Victim to New Scam Techniques

As much as we knew it was a possibility, we were still a little surprised here at to hear that scammers were pretending to be private investigators in a payday loan debt scheme. The incident cited at credit.com says that a caller saying he was a private investigator pressured the victim into going to the local courthouse to settle her debt. There are so many things wrong about this: Private investigators are NOT debt collectors. Our business is to uncover facts, evidence and the truth, not to contact people and collect on debts. No one from will ever call to push you to settle a debt. It won’t happen. Unless there is a court case and hearing, no one can just “go to the courthouse” [...]

If You Are In Business, You Are a Potential Target for Corporate Espionage

What do you do in your leisure time? Watch football or motor racing? That’s all fun, right? Don’t kid yourself. Major sports are major businesses and that means big money is at stake. And when big money is on the line, there are also people who will do anything to “win.” For example, consider the recent “Deflate-gate” centered on footballs and Tom Brady. Now there is the Mercedes F-1 team suing a departing engineer for alleged data theft as he goes to join the competing Ferrari team. Corporate espionage and employee theft is limitless. It is not limited by content, size of business or geography. It is limited only by the aspirations of the person or persons engaging in it. Stealing confidential client lists – [...]

Cell Phone Forensics Can Be Your Best Friend When You are Accused of a Crime

Working with attorneys to help them build cases for their clients is an everyday experience for . We deal in the truth and there are two reasons attorneys look to us: They are trying to gather facts that prove their client’s innocence or create doubt as to guilt They are trying to gather information to understand the client’s situation better and be ready to defend with facts One case that illustrates why attorneys use investigators so often included a cell phone investigation. The attorney’s client, Ralph*, was accused of robbing a convenience store. This wasn’t a case of cell phone hack detection or cell phone spying, it was the facts that the cell phone device could supply that was needed. Most people are aware that [...]

It May Start as a Joke, but Spyware on the Computer is Never Funny

Proving innocence and proving guilt are opposite sides of the same investigative coin. Here at , we are concerned with facts, evidence and truth. That’s the investigative business. That being said, good investigators are also experienced professionals - and, I dare say, experts – in human behavior. It is that understanding of how people react and what they are likely to do that gives us leads that others might not recognize. detectives are also steadfast in their objectivity, which is another sign of a professional. Objectivity promotes clarity and the ability to see past the heat of the moment. Derek came to us in a highly emotional state. The young man was trying to build a career in accounting and there had been “an incident” [...]

What Causes 33% of All Business Bankruptcies?

It isn’t uncommon for the phone to start ringing at at the beginning of calendar quarters - you know, January, April, July and October. We don’t always know who will be on the other end of the line – small business owners, financial officers, or sometimes an attorney. But we know why they are calling – it will be about missing money, theft by employees or employee embezzlement. That’s because quarterly reports are reviewed and something is found that isn’t quite right. Sometimes there is just a suspicion and in those cases, we provide financial forensic experts to thoroughly examine the financial records and processes. No one wants to think there is an employee stealing from the company. In other situations, there is obvious theft [...]

Covert Surveillance with Four-legged Furry Spies

Would you consider a cat or dog roaming around your business or home as a possible security threat? What about if the animal was your own pet? At , we doubt you’d even consider it. But you may start to wonder about it after reading this blog post. According to an article in The Hacker News, a security researcher with a large security consultancy firm thought it would be fun to conduct an experiment in “weaponizing” his grandmother’s pet cat to map vulnerable WiFi networks in his neighborhood. He built a custom collar for Coco made from a Wi-Fi card, GPS module, Spark Core chip, battery and leopard-print fabric. He then set Coco loose. During the cat’s three-hour jaunt through the neighborhood, the security researcher [...]

Is the Purchase of a Smartwatch Setting You up for Digital Forensics Services?

Who do you know with one of the smart, sleek, new smartwatches? Ohhh. So Cool! And so vulnerable to hacking. More so than a smartphone or a tablet. Why? A recent article in the Christian Post explains. According to a recent study by Dr. Frank Breitinger, associate director of the University of New Haven Cyber Forensics Research and Education Group in Connecticut, there is a “lack of encryption and an unsecure authentication system” in all the smartwatches they tested. In the study they tried to infiltrate the devices to get a variety of information such as emails, calendars, messages, health, fitness and financial data. In all cases, if the information was on the device, they were able to get it! Computer forensics experts like those [...]

It’s the Little Details That Come from Computer Forensics Experience That Breaks Cases Wide Open

As a full-service investigative firm, is the source for a certified computer examiner in the Indianapolis area. Our experience is part of the reason attorneys turn to us. In fact, it is our knowledge and experience that can really make the difference in some cases. For instance, we were tasked with completing a computer forensic examination on a work computer used by a person accused of providing confidential information to a competitor. The accused knew his computer would be submitted to us during a general information meeting. Our impression, because, as investigators, we are highly observant during an investigation, was that the subject was confident, almost smug, that nothing would be found on the device. It was a red flag to us. The computer forensic [...]

The Complexity of Cellular Tower Triangulation Affects Accuracy of Evidence

There is a lot of consternation about the accuracy of forensic cell tower evidence. Over the last several years courts have ruled that evidence submitted by authorities has not been precise or correct and people were wrongfully convicted. Here at , our cellular forensics experts would agree that the accuracy of cellular tower triangulation to determine location of cell phones at a given time is a complex business. There are few cut and dried if-then scenarios. For one thing, service providers are not consistent in the algorithms and directions for switching customers’ phones from one tower to another. Nor are they too forthcoming in sharing and explaining their processes. That’s one of the reasons professionals have to be knowledgeable and experienced – just to know [...]

Do You Think Computer Forensics Conjures Up the Past Like Magic?

Computer forensics is not magic, in fact it is very technical in nature and can be very exacting. People always wonder how the computer forensics experts at can “conjure” up “stuff” from computers that the owners thought was gone. How does forensics data recovery work? When it comes to files, forensic computer investigations and computer forensic analysis works from a three-pronged approach. The first is to recover files as we users know them. For example, a Word document or an Excel worksheet or workbook. These are files that openly exist on the computer. These are not files the user thinks has been deleted or removed. Although some of those could exist in their original form in the recycle or trash folders. The second is the [...]