Your spouse’s computer activity has you worried. You’ve noticed that windows are quickly closed when you walk in the room, as if your spouse is hiding something. You instantly suspect the worst – that your spouse is involved with someone else. When your spouse is away, you try to check the emails, but they have all been deleted. You don’t know what to do. You search “how to recover deleted emails” and find the term “computer forensics.” Could computer forensics help prove your spouse’s innocence or guilt?

Perhaps you are a corporate executive and suspect one of your employees of trading secrets to your competitors. Maybe his/her job performance has become lacking, or you glimpsed him/her meeting one of your competitors. No matter what caused you to suspect your employee, now that your suspicions have been raised you can’t stop wondering. Computer forensics could help determine whether your employee is loyal to you or trading information to your competitors.

While the term “computer forensics” may sound like something out of a TV crime drama, it is a real method of investigation. In addition to catching cheating spouses and unfaithful employees, it can also be used to investigate cases of fraud, rape, cyberstalking, murder, child abuse, and child pornography. Computer forensic evidence collected by licensed private investigators can also be admissible in court. Methods of gathering information through computer forensics can include analyzing RAM, recovering deleted files, and correlating information gathered from multiple hard drives.
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