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Ask HN: accessing my deceased relative's iPhone

2 points by idm ↗ HN
I'm looking for advice/suggestions on how to retrieve the contact list from a (distant) relative's iphone. Tragically, this person died without letting the rest of the family know who their friends and associates were, and the iPhone is literally the best the family has to work with. Of course, the phone is password protected, or there would be no problem.

Is this something Apple will do if they are provided with the right documentation? Do they have a service mode for the iphone or a special cable or something?

Is this something the police are able to handle?

Finally, is this something I can do? My thought is to use iTunes to create a backup of the phone, then dive into the backup using strings. Once I locate some promising strings, I would use a hexeditor to find the offset, and look for plaintext contact information.

Any thoughts or references are much appreciated. Thanks, HN!

9 comments

[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 32.1 ms ] thread
swah
Trying all the combinations 10000 shouldn't take all that long.
JBerlinsky
The device locks you out after a certain number of attempts.
c1sc0
More importantly, it will delete all data on the device after 10 attempts if the user was paranoid enough to set this option. I am.
chrismsnz
By using a recent distribution of Linux you can actually mount the phone as a removable device and browse the filesystem.

An article that talks about it: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/ubuntu-lucid-lynx-1004-ca...

It doesn't specifically mention contact data, but it's probably stored in some unencrypted database which should be easy to look up if you can get in. IIRC, the stock Apple messaging app was back-ended with SQLLite so you might just be in luck!

EDIT: In fact, I'm going to try this on my iPod Touch (3rd Gen) when I get home. I'll let you know how I get on :)

idm
Fantastic reference! I'm extremely interested in any updated details, since I won't have access to the phone until some time tomorrow.
chrismsnz
Mounted the iPod, grepped around some semi-promising looking files and couldn't find anything really :\

Perhaps you could try making a dummy Google account and setting up the iPhone contacts sync in iTunes - then view the contacts within GMail. IIRC, that didn't require me to use the pin code but it may have required that the phone be synced with it's "parent" copy of iTunes.

Best of luck, sorry I couldn't be of more help.

idm
Thanks - this works for accessing lots of other data on the device, however, so it's really neat!
idm
Thanks to everyone. I actually didn't get in to the phone, and I'm kindof perplexed. I have returned the phone to my relatives, but it's still a mystery what is on it.