The Evolution of Instant Messaging Applications from a Forensic Perspective

The facilities offered by the evolution of new information technologies leads that people desire (and many times, desperately need) to be increasingly interconnected to the Internet, exchanging information with other people anywhere and anytime. Currently, most people make extensive use of mobile devices with hardware and software capabilities similar to those of a computer, which added to the greater coverage of telephone operators and better speed in data networks, provide the user with permanent connection availability. At the same time, the software companies have developed a huge number of applications in different fields such as communication, appointments, finances, news, social networks, geo-location, that are used to transfer and share information which will be important from the forensic perspective. We focus our attention on the so called Instant Messaging (IM) applications such as whatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc.