Researchers at Decipher Forensics have said that they have zeroed in on how to retrieve deleted files from the mobile photo-sharing application, Snapchat.
Snapchat, which enables users to share pictures and videos with other users, claims that photos disappear within 10 seconds of being viewed.
Decipher Forensics said that Snapchat moves upward of 150 million photos through the service on a daily basis, when compared to Facebook’s Instagram, which moves 40 million photos per day.
Study author Richard Hickman said: "We wanted to know if snaps really do disappear forever, if there is metadata associated with snaps, if snaps can be recovered after becoming expired, and if they can be recovered, if there is metadata associated with the expired snap."
Researchers found that based on the home screen for Snapchat, the time stamps are stored at some place, even for expired snaps.
Hickman said: "Each of the images within the received_image_snaps folder had a .nomedia extension appended to the end of the file name."
AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit recognised the .nomedia extension that was appended to the end of the file name and ignored it, displaying the images.
Decipher Forensics noted the research should also be done on iOS devices to find out if snaps are recoverable and can have time stamp and sender information associated with the snaps.
