Introduction: The recovery of private social-media conversations—Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram DM, Telegram, X/Twitter DM, among others—has become one of the most sought-after objectives. Platforms such as Meta have enabled default E2EE in Messenger and Facebook, relying on the Signal Protocol and their own Labyrinth Protocol. The result is that not even the provider can decrypt the messages, which increases user privacy but complicates forensic and law-enforcement work. Consequently, most chat requests must now be directed to the client endpoint (phone or PC) and to backups that are still unencrypted.
Mobile forensics tools such as Cellebrite and Magnet AXIOM use developer mode, chip-off techniques or full-disk copies to retrieve SQLite databases, msgstore.db files and Documents/Inbox folders, among others. This procedure is supported by the NIST SP 800-101 guideline, which sets out the phases of preservation, acquisition and analysis.
Backups on Google Drive, iCloud or manual exports may contain unencrypted chats or keys provided by the user, enabling their forensic recovery or decryption.
Recent studies demonstrate the possibility of reconstructing Facebook Messenger threads even after logical deletion by analyzing collisions in journals and write-ahead logging files.
MLAT orders, subpoenas or law-enforcement requests allow the retrieval of histories when encryption does not prevent it—for example, messages not protected with E2EE or metadata.
In-transit capture is only viable for unencrypted protocols, now uncommon. However, exploiting public content and other OSINT techniques remains useful for reconstructing conversational context. Accessing social networks and extracting chats is possible, but requires complex work that leverages the vulnerabilities described.
MANDATORY
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