Archive for August, 2009

If you are a cell phone customer, then you should also have a battery charger. The majority of cell phones are accompanied by an AC adapter, which plugs directly into your cell phone and also into a standard electrical outlet for recharging. Depending on the type of phone, it may take up to 24 hours for the battery to fully recharge. But, what happens when you are on the road and your cell phone’s battery runs out? What will you do if there is no nearby electrical outlet to help recharge your phone? In this situation, the best accessory that you could own is a cable that allows you to connect your cell phone into the vehicle’s cigarette lighter slot for instant use and recharging. With this method, you can use your cell phone immediately or allow it to recharge if you see that the battery is low. › Continue reading…

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Computer Forensics

The field of computer forensics was developed primarily by law enforcement personnel for investigating drug and financial crimes. It employs strict protocols to gather information contained on a wide variety of electronic devices, using forensic procedures to locate deleted files and hidden information.

Computer forensics tasks include capturing all the information contained on a specific electronic device by using either a forensic copy technique or by making an image of all or a portion of the device. A forensic copy provides an exact duplicate of the hard drive or storage device. None of the metadata, including the ?last accessed date,?is changed from the original. However, the copy is a ?live?version, so accessing the data on the copy,even only to ?see what is there,?can change this sensitive metadata.

By contrast, making a forensic image of the required information puts a protective electronic wrapper around the entire collection. The collection can be viewed with special software, and the documents can be opened, extracted from the collection, and examined without changing the files or their metadata.

Other forensic tasks include locating and accessing deleted files, finding partial files, tracking Internet history, cracking passwords, and detecting information located in the slack or unallocated space. Slack space is the area at the end of a specific cluster on a hard drive that contains no data; unallocated space contains the remnants of files that have been ?deleted? but not erased from the device, as ?deleting? simply removes the pointer to the location of a specific file on a hard drive, not the file itself.

Electronic Discovery

Electronic discovery has its roots in the field of civil litigation support and deals with organizing electronic files using their attached metadata. Because of the large volume encountered, these files are usually incorporated into a litigation retrieval system to allow review and production in an easy methodology. Legal data management principles are used, including redaction rules and production methodologies.

Electronic discovery tasks usually begin after the files are captured. File metadata is used to organize and cull the collections. Documents can be examined in their native file format or converted to TIF or PDF images to allow for redaction and easy production.

Common Capabilities, Different Philosophies

Computer forensics and electronic discovery methodologies share some common capabilities. One is the ability to produce an inventory of the collection, allowing reviewers to quickly see what is present. Another is the ability to determine a common time zone to standardize date and time stamps across a collection. Without this standardization, an e-mail response may appear to have been created before the original e-mail.

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Ever since the early nineteen nineties, bagless vacuum cleaners have been chipping away at the market dominance of their bagged vacuum cleaner counterpart. Claiming to best the bagged variety of cleaner in a number of different ways, bagless vacuum cleaners generally carry a higher price tag too. For the most part, you get what you pay for with bagless vacuum cleaners; so even if you are on a budget, don’t let the price tag put you off. › Continue reading…

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