Bypassing the "pattern"-type screen lock of the suicide's phone

[roarred]

Hello,

I am having an unusual situation. A teen who was an acquaintance of mine has commited suicide. His parents, knowing that I'm "into computers", asked me for help. They want me to make it possible to read the SMS messages from the boy's phone - HTC Desire S. They can't read them by themselves, because the phone has a screen lock "pattern" - in which you have to connect 4 of 9 dots in a correct order. We don't know the right pattern and therefore we can't unlock the phone and read the SMS messages stored in it.

What should we do in such a situation? Our purpose is not to regain control of the phone - we just want to read the SMS messages. We don't care if we will do it from the phone itself or after connecting the phone to the computer.

I'd like to also tell You that I was accused of being a thief on another Android forum. I want to ensure You that I'm not one. If I were a thief, I would just hard reset the phone and the problem would be gone. But as I highlighted before, we want to read the messages from the phone, to know the reasons of the boy's decision to commit suicide.

I will really appreciate every idea on how to solve the problem, and thank You in advance.

 

[Mooncatt]

Have they tried asking the phone company for the text records? If the parents are the account owners, they should be able to. If not, then try asking the police if they can help get a court order to have the records turned over.

As for bypassing the lock itself, I wouldn't know.

 

[EvilMonkey]

I agree. The parents should contact the carrier who can provide the text records.

The lock screen pattern is there to prevent exactly what you're trying to do. If it was easy, there wouldn't be a purpose in it. I also think you can have use a pattern that consists of 4 to 9 dots to connect, so there are a lot more possibilities (unless you know that he was using a 4-dot pattern)

 

[roarred]

Thank you for your advice. I'll talk to the parents about the possibility to ask the phone company for the text records.

 

[gnr_2]

I saw a real life crime show with this situation and the police had to send the phone to an expert and that was with a four digit code. Otherwise if you try, it will wipe everything on the phone. The phone company will only have To - From - Time information, not the actual texts (I think.)

Sent from my totally awesome Sprint Galaxy Nexus, even if I don't know all its secrets yet.

 

[Joshua Badaloo]

There is something called the android adb or adp or something... It allows the user to access the phone screen on a pc... If i remember correctly there is a command line to remove the lock pattern... dont quote me on this though, im not sure, look it up!