Extracting WhatsApp userdata

[SteveW73]

Hello,

I need to extract old stored messages / chats in the WhatsApp Userdata folders for legal purposes (I was dumb and deleted all my chats and the backup databases so can't restore them).

From reading this article, all hope is not lost though:

https://www.group-ib.com/blog/whatsapp_forensic_artifacts

Can anyone help with this? I understand that I need root access to get into the hidden app folder system, but unlocking my bootloader will wipe all data from my phone (Pixel 3a).

Anyone got experience with this who could provide some guidance?

Thank you.

 

[Rukbat]

Unlocking the bootloader does a factory reset, which wipes the phone. You have to unlock the bootloader before you need to restore data. (You normally root, or not, at the start. You don't root after you discover that there's data you need to recover - because it doesn't work that way.) There's not that much that you can do at this point. You deleted data you had, you didn't make a backup and you didn't root the ROM - all things that would have eliminated the problem - and the only things that would have.

Sorry.

(You could try having someone refactor PhotoRec, from source, to run on Android [it's basically running in Linux], but that's about all I can suggest.)