Retrieve Data From Android Devices Without Rooting
Of course, under certain conditions.
Android OS is designed to isolate the access to data of an application from others. Through linux-permission base, Android encloses application data and protects them from other users.
In other word, we can’t get data without launching the owner app or other apps which are allowed by the owner one.
Android inherits the set of features in Linux, including the power of a root user. However, unlike the root user in Linux which is normally assigned to the possessor of the device, the root user in Android doesn’t really “exist”.
To be more specific, by default, there is no way to execute some tasks as a root user on Android. Curious people have to find other ways to inject a root into the Android system.
This job is called rooting an Android device. To explain simply, the objective of rooting is to put a world-executable su binary in the system directory (system/bin or system/xbin).
By rooting a device, you get root privileges and are able to access all data in the device. This is the only way to retrieve data without launching application.
In fact, there is still another work-around that allows us to get access to the data stored in the device…
