Legal Use of iPhone Messages and WhatsApp Chats
With the advent of the smartphone revolution, instant messaging via services such as iMessage and WhatsApp has fundamentally changed the way we communicate. The frictionless convenience of being able to quickly share texts, images, videos, contacts, and links, in just a few taps and for free, has resulted in the widespread adoption of these services. And because modern smartphones come with tens or even hundreds of gigabytes of storage, there’s little incentive to ever delete anything. That holiday picture your sibling sent you 3 years ago? Probably still there in your pocket. The string of abusive or inappropriate messages from a former boss or colleague? Just as likely to have remained. For their ubiquity and high persistence, text messages have in the past few years made ever more regular appearances in court cases all over the world.
But how does one export or print these messages in order to present them in court, or archive them for future reference? The most common approach is to take screenshots of the messages on the iPhone itself, screen by screen, and then stitching them together after exporting them to the computer. That’s extremely tedious and impractical for large amounts of data, requiring hours of careful grunt work. Furthermore, the resulting images aren’t searchable, may feature cut texts and lack credibility, thus increasing the likelihood that they would be rejected by the opposing party and the judge. As a last resort, the carrier could be subpoenaed to obtain text messages, but that won’t do for texts and media exchanged via more modern services such as iMessage and WhatsApp, which are end-to-end encrypted.
At DigiDNA, we develop iMazing, a desktop application for Mac and PC, designed to manage iPhone and iPad data. Since 2011, we’ve offered tools to browse and extract iPhone messages — at first SMS and MMS, and today iMessage, WhatsApp chats, and all types of attachments. We continuously improve these tools, taking into account feedback from our users to maximize ease of use, reliability, and authenticity of exported messaging data. In this article, we’ll go over a few real-world use cases which demonstrate how inexpensive and user-friendly software such as iMazing can contribute efficiently in legal settings.
Use case: Documenting attorney-client communications
James Carroll, attorney and partner at Mixon, Carroll & Frazier, is a long time iMazing user. He shared with us insights about the increased use and importance of text messages:
“Over the last two years, clients and other attorneys have begun to use their cell phones to send important texts, in lieu of emails, that need to be saved, as a source of documented data, or as evidence in procedural matters. This deluge of text messages is becoming the norm, exactly like emails replaced paper correspondence just a few years ago.”
For Mr. Carroll’s practice, archiving this trove of data quickly became a necessity. Having a copy of these communications is both safer and more organized than simply leaving them on various phones. And, since iMazing saves the data in its original format, Mr. Carroll can come back at a later stage to search through it or to export it to PDF and CSV. Messaging data thus becomes actionable and is easily stored for future use. All it takes is to make a backup of the iPhone, which is achieved with a single click.
It should be noted that backups can (and should!) be encrypted for maximum security — this can be done from within iMazing too.
In a similar albeit more focused use case, Jack Graham, Law Practice Manager in Brisbane, uses iMazing to better protect his business against potential litigation:
“The digital limitations of mobile phones is something of great concern to us. Devices fail and users sometimes delete texts in error. We use iMazing in order to print out text messages where our clients are giving us instructions that are unusual or are not in line with the legal advice our lawyers are giving them. We strongly believe that this will protect us in case things go wrong and we were to be sued for negligence.”
Messaging data can also be leveraged, along with call logs, for accurate billing. No need to time calls or count the number of messages sent and received. A monthly export of messages and call history data to a spreadsheet is both more precise and convenient.
Use case: Producing evidence for court
Having access to messaging data does not automatically guarantee that they can be readily used in court. In order to maximize acceptance by the judge, printouts of conversations need to satisfy a few additional constraints — printing screenshots taken from the iPhone itself isn’t just tedious, it simply doesn’t provide credible enough evidence.
Jamie Sasser is a legal assistant in Texas. She remembers the inadequacy of processing screenshots from clients’ iPhones:
“Before we discovered iMazing, we had to rely on clients taking screenshots of text messages and the majority of the time, the date and time did not show up on the text making it difficult to have a reliable time period to use as evidence in court. We also have many clients that bring in multiple pages of unorganized screenshots they have printed, and I have spent multiple hours trying to piece together conversations from such copies. Most of the time, texts are cut off and the conversations are incomplete. iMazing gives us the ability to have the full string of conversations.”
As Mrs. Sasser laments, the iPhone does not always display the date and time a message was received or sent. Furthermore, the format of the date can be colloquial and relative: instead of a precise day of the month, you may see Today or Yesterday. In iMazing, the precise date and time of each sent and received message, including the timezone, can be exported by checking the Show time for all messages checkbox as shown below:
In addition, it is also possible to display the phone number of the sender, which is a must to guarantee credibility. Consider the following chat:
It was easily crafted in 5 minutes.
This obviously bogus exchange did take place, but of course not with Warren Buffett. The contact’s name was simply replaced after the fact, along with the contact’s picture.
For legal exports, using iMazing’s Show Contact Details option is a must, as it reveals the real phone number or Apple ID of the sender.
Let’s looks at the same conversation, displayed in iMazing along with metadata for each message:
For even greater credibility, iMazing’s PDF exports and printouts may also include important metadata related to the export: the serial number of the iPhone that the messages were extracted from, and the modification date of the database from which the data was pulled. Here is the PDF version of that conversation, with all metadata included:
These export options were implemented specifically to make a real difference in court. They are already effectively used to prepare supporting evidence in court cases such as divorce and custody:
“We use iMazing in our family law cases dealing with divorce and custody issues. It has proven extremely beneficial in preparing accurately dated text messages to use as evidence in court.”
Ed Walsh, Civil Trial Law and Family Law, Texas Board of Legal Specialization.
Accuracy and esthetics matter too
We’ve put a tremendous amount of effort in reproducing the layout and esthetics of the iPhone’s Messages and WhatsApp apps as accurately as possible, including emojis, pictures, shared web links, and even group chat events. This isn’t just for show: having an accurate representation decreases the chances that a judge would reject messages as supporting evidence, and reduces the likelihood that any party could argue against their credibility.
iMazing also reproduces emojis with perfect accuracy, on both macOS and Windows. It may seem trivial, but emojis have been showing up more and more in court cases, as Santa Clara University School of Law Professor Eric Goldman’s research shows:
Tips for increased credibility
It can be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the messages presented in court were not forged. The attorneys among our users who we consulted with had the following tips to share:
- Compare timestamps with records from the carrier. As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, the majority of exchanged messages are encrypted and cannot be obtained from carriers. But metadata can, and an efficient strategy is to subpoena the phone records from the carrier service provider to prove that the timing is correct and that there were messages sent/received at the time shown on the printout.
- Extract voice messages. The iPhone’s Messages and WhatsApp apps have offered voice messaging for some years already. These recordings can be readily extracted by iMazing, and are converted into a format playable on both Windows and Mac computers. Voice messages are hard to forge. They can, therefore, play an important part in identifying the sender.
- Use corroborating data. Photos, calendars, voicemail, call history, notes… all of these additional types of data can contribute greatly as supporting evidence. iMazing can export these data types to various formats, offering forensics capabilities which are highly appreciated.
“We believe, to date, that iMazing does both of these functions better than any product on the market. But what is “amazing” (pun intended) is all the other things that iMazing does that we stumbled onto after we began using the product. We can search our client’s iPhones for photos, videos, web links and all other types of data “stored” on the iPhone without incurring the expense of hiring a forensic expert to pull data off the device.”
James Carroll, Mixon, Carroll & Frazier
Not just for professionals
It is often more practical for clients to handle exporting messaging data themselves: they have unrestricted access to their own smartphone and can document ongoing conversations with ease. iMazing was developed to be used regardless of technical expertise, and our website features a wealth of task-oriented guides covering every aspect of the software, including How to Print Messages for Court. Here are a few testimonials from some of our users who have successfully leveraged iMazing for fighting their cases in court:
- Christina (Harassment case): “When I needed to get hundreds of text messages and numerous voicemails off my phone and in a context that could support me in court, iMazing was very helpful. The printouts were integral in showing what I needed to the judge, in order to make sure that my life was safe in the future.”
- Ryan (Custody case): “The court case I dealt with was for custody and support. From day one we did the majority of our communication through texting. I always saved our messages by simply snapshotting an image on my phone; however, it became a hassle when the messages became several pages. That’s when I discovered iMazing. The software is very user-friendly and generates an exact print out of the texts off my phone. I couldn’t believe just how simple it was to use. I was able to upload everything and send the file to my lawyer.”
- Clark (Divorce/Custody case): “iMazing made short work of extracting and preparing text messages for a courtroom presentation that was the deciding factor in winning my long and hard-fought family law case. iMazing should be a standard tool in the arsenal of every practicing lawyer. The Excel export was clean and well organized and the date and time stamps lent a real sense of authenticity and a narrative feel that greatly enhanced our presentation.”
iMazing can be downloaded free of charge here. Backing up and browsing messaging data is entirely free, so there’s no reason not to start doing so right away. Printing and exporting messaging data requires a license ($44.99 as of May 2019).
