IPhone and smart phone data leaves a trail of evidence behind for authorities.
"When someone tells me they have an iPhone in a case, I say, 'Yeah!' I can do tons with an IPhone," said Fazio, who works in the sheriff's department high-tech crimes unit.
The IPhones generally store more data than other high-end phones -- and investigators such as Fazio frequently can tap in to that information for evidence.
And while some phone users routinely delete information from their devices, that step is seldom as final as it seems.
"When you hit the delete button, it's never really deleted," Fazio said.
The devices can help police learn where you've been, what you were doing there and whether you've got something to hide.
Every time an IPhone user closes out of the built-in mapping application, the phone snaps a screenshot and stores it. Savvy law-enforcement agents armed with search warrants can use those snapshots to see if a suspect is lying about whereabouts during a crime.
IPhone photos are embedded with GEO tags and identifying information, meaning that photos posted online might not only include GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken, but also the serial number of the phone that took it.
Even more information is stored by the applications themselves, including the user's browser history. That data is meant in part to direct custom-tailored advertisements to the user, but experts said some of it could be useful to police.
The keyboard cache logs everything that you type in to learn autocorrect so that it can correct a user's typing mistakes. Apple doesn't store that cache very securely, Zdziarski contended, so someone with know-how could recover months of typing in the order in which it was typed, even if the e-mail or text it was part of has long since been deleted.
You won't find Claire Ebel using a "smart" phone, or a navigation system in her car -- or even an E-ZPass transponder. And her computer uses dial-up to connect to the Internet instead of wireless.
"It scares the hell out of me that what is happening with almost no thought, and regrettably no fear, is that so much of what we would like to think is private communication is in fact out there in the ether," said Ebel, who is executive director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union.
And she said, "I very much worry about the ease with which law enforcement can access information about the comings and goings of private citizens who are suspected of no crime."
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