

Ask HN: accessing my deceased relative's iPhone - idm

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.<p>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?<p>Is this something the police are able to handle?<p>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.<p>Any thoughts or references are much appreciated.  Thanks, HN!
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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...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/ubuntu-lucid-
lynx-1004-can-read-your-iphones-secrets/8424)

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 :)

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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!

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JBerlinsky
This may help: <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596153595>

It requires that the phone had at one point been jailbroken, for the most
part, unfortunately. If you're in the NJ area, I have a copy laying around
somewhere...

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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.

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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.

