Dealing with harassment.. Need to access Whatsapp messages from broken iPhone

Kittycat000

I am pursuing a harassment case against somebody. I spoke to the Kilkenny guards yesterday for the first time about it. They were very understanding but as my official address is in Wexford, they told me to go to the Wexford guards to pursue the case. They said as long as I allow access to my phone records there will be no problem. I am going back home to Wexford this week and will be talking to the guards about the harassment.

Only thing is, all the abusive messages were on whatsapp on an iPhone that broke about 2 weeks ago (water damage).
I previously screenshotted all the messages and saved them to my computer but I don't think this is proof enough. It has to come directly from the phone.

Online it seems there are ways to retrieve messages from a broken android phone but not an iPhone.
I will happily give my consent for garda to access the phone records, but how is this done when the phone is broken? Can they get onto whatsapp 'headquarters' and retrieve the messages?

I am worried my case will be jeopardized due to the broken phone. How will the Garda access the records!?

Help!

ciarang85

Once you get a new phone, re-download whatsapp and press the back-up option when it appears on screen and u will get back all your messages once you use your old number

Kittycat000

ciarang85 wrote: »

Once you get a new phone, re-download whatsapp and press the back-up option when it appears on screen and u will get back all your messages once you use your old number

I have a new phone the past 2 weeks. I downloaded whatsapp when I got the phone. Will I delete it and download it again? Will that work?

ciarang85

Kittycat000 wrote: »

I have a new phone the past 2 weeks. I downloaded whatsapp when I got the phone. Will I delete it and download it again? Will that work?

I'm not sure, i think it will only backup for the last 7 days, i presumed you weren't using it for the last 2 weeks, do a quick google on whatsapp backup and you might be able to figure something out, i think your iphone would have messages saved to icloud or google drive. i'm not sure how to get messages back from there as i don't have a iphone

Get Real

You can allow your phone to be sent for analysis by the guards. This however is entirely up to you, and you might not want to.

But this could retrieve the data if the normal methods dont.

Kittycat000

Get Real wrote: »

You can allow your phone to be sent for analysis by the guards. This however is entirely up to you, and you might not want to.

But this could retrieve the data if the normal methods dont.

Sent for analysis how?

I feel that would be a complete invasion of my privacy. I have messages from my friends, family members etc that I don't necessarily want Garda looking at. Just the continuing abusive messages from the one person.

Get Real

Kittycat000 wrote: »

Sent for analysis how?

I feel that would be a complete invasion of my privacy. I have messages from my friends, family members etc that I don't necessarily want Garda looking at. Just the continuing abusive messages from the one person.

Ah that's fair enough. I understand. I just meant as a last resort if you can't retrieve the messages from your damaged phone yourself.

It would mean sending the phone and having those messages retrieved. How, I'm not entirely sure. But yeah, it's a trade off between what you want personally/not wanting to give over your phone, which is understandable as they are very personal devices these days.