AOL chat logs?

I saw a story on a local news channel recently about a missing teenage girl,she had run away apparently.

To get to the point the reporter was talking to a family friend who had "recovered" the contents of AOL chats she had with "middle-aged men" that he described as disgusting.


My point being,how did he do this?
My experience is with Yahoo and I have found that it keeps a log of all the people you chat with and at what time/date the chat was,also it keeps a copy of all files you transfer over it.
But keeping a log of all content of chats?

Unless the parents had a keystroke logger or some nanny-ware I don't see how this was done.

Well, maybe she had Trillian - it can keep logs of all chat/im clients.

Greg

Well it didn't go very indepth,but they did mention AOL so that was why I assumed it was the IM client she was using.

I also thought of the fact that she was keping the logs herself,but why would she?

If AOL does keep a log by default that seems like a huge potential problem.

Not so sure about others. But, ICQ and AIM both keep detailed logs up to a certain size of all incomming and outgoing im's. You can turn this of in ICQ. Not sure about AIM. I have'nt used it in a while. But to the point. I had a client that wanted to see what her daughter was doning on line. So I went in on her login on the puter. Then started her AIM and pulled up the messages. Anyway to sum it up. She's now grounded.... :D

Thanks P2P,it all makes sense now :)

They were so vague that it seemed like some secret forensic technique,but since I've only used yahoo I was kind of surprised that an Instant Messenger would log chats.

There should at least be an option to turn logging off,for personal privacy.

Along the lines of a keylogger, there are spyware packages available that record every activity on the system. Depending on the software, you can choose to have them run silently so they do not show up in processes. I'm a reseller for one brand that we use mostly in PI work to catch cheating spouses (fun fun) but occasionally I have parents that have a legitimate concern about their kids. This way it doesn't matter how savy the kid is as the spyware is taking screen shots every 3 seconds. All email, IM programs etc are recorded by date and time and are printable.

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So I went in on her login on the puter. Then started her AIM and pulled up the messages

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but you ave to know the peron's login/password first though, right!?

v_Ln

I've seen those programs that take screen shots before,but how can they be invisible?
Taking a screen shot every three seconds has got to eat up disc space fast,thats pretty obvious.
Do they hide from "alt-ctrl-del"?
What about the registry?

I know as a kid I probably would have caught these,that and the fact that my early experiments with the registry and Linux had me re-installing windows every couple of weeks :)

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Originally posted here by valhallen
but you ave to know the peron's login/password first though, right!?

v_Ln

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She has XP Pro on NTFS. So she made herself admin and gave her daughter a limited account. Her daughter had her AIM set to autologin because she did'nt think anyone could access her account. Heh, heh. Little did she know, her mom could...She was busted... :D

The issue with the usage of hdd space is null.. You can buy a 100 gig hdd for 200 bucks ...

The program I use deletes log files after so many days depending on the settings you choose.

This runs silently in the background and yes, it hides from ctrl/alt/del (processes)

What it can't hide from is a reformat obviously.

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Heh, heh. Little did she know, her mom could...She was busted.

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heh ouch >_<; when will kids learn that parents know everything

:D

v_Ln

Go to your hard drive find your AOL file look for organize file then your or any
Screename then the .ARL file read it with notepad it will show where you have
Been. But power tools a popular program has IM and chat log's.

here are the issues i think you are missing here. first of all in a missing persons case, police are usually involved, and aol logs all im convos.

but beyond this... many times in cases like this... the news reports "instant message"convos when they mean email. i know a kid that got busted for something and they confiscated his puter. news reported that a judge read his "instant messages".... but it was his emails.

finally, the other issue we forget is that this is a young immature girl... many times young immature people save their im's. so you never know.

In the same area organize there is a file where you can also read your email if you have your filing cabinet open.