Long before there were computers, internet connection and mobile phones, words were written by hand, pen/pencil and paper. If you made a mistake you would wad up the paper, throw it in the trash and start all over again, or use your trusty eraser and change the wording. Or you could use your “typewriter” and type a letter, same applied, if you made a mistake you would rip the paper out, roll in a new sheet and start all over. And if you had to research anything, you headed off to the library and conducted manual searches. If you didn’t check out a book, no one knew that you even opened up a book or copied the information.
What you did on pen and paper was private, minus the overbearing teacher in school that would occasionally get that football folded up love note and read it to the class. Lesson here: Once you ripped it up and threw it in the trash, it was gone forever, there was no evidence that it ever existed. There was no history of what you looked up in the library. That’s no so today. There is no real trash can, there is no pen, no paper, no eraser that can protect the current written word. When you use a “Device” or look up/research on a device it has a footprint. It’s called “History” and it’s a tab on your computer that lists all sites you visit, it’s a cloud that stores all your information, it’s a cyber-trash can that never really gets emptied. There is always a way to see those discarded words and research you thought you had deleted.
Scenarios of such words can be found in the following:
Text Messages (words or audio) Emails, Instant Messages, Calendars, Facebook and other Social Media Sites. These words remain for all to see and read and hear. When you think it’s written in private, be sure, there is always a way to retrieve the words after you press the “Send” button.
There are Forensic Experts that conduct Computer Forensics and cell phone forensics to bring back deleted information. offers computer forensic services. We are hired quite often for a computer investigation. There is a need for digital forensics and a computer forensic expert can obtain deleted information from a computer or a cell phone, if that information has not been written over, and in many cases with so many GB on a phone or computer, it can take a long time for the device to write over deleted information.
We are contacted by Attorneys, Corporations, Insurance Companies, even the private sector to conduct a computer forensic analysis of a device to assist them in finding the truth.
-Brenda McGinley, CEO, All in Investigations, All in Investigations
