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prxr13

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 15, 2008
21
0
I began working with an intern, from high school, this past summer. I upgraded her phone to ios7 before its release, and she was thrilled to have it. Tragically, she died in a car accident two weeks ago. Her mother has come to me for help, she cannot unlock her daughters phone because she does not know her password. She simply wants the pictures her daughter took off the phone.

Would iExplorer work on a locked phone? I simply do not want to risk putting her phone into restore mode. The mother disabled the phone by incorrectly guessing the passwords. Please any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
advise the mother to take the phone with the receipt to apple. parental proof may be required but not sure.


there is no way to access a password-locked iphone otherwise.

if you are successful at restoring, it would delete everything, which would not serve the purpose.
 
Very sorry to hear that.

I know that 'Image Capture' on a Mac works while the phone is locked. I haven't tried Windows Explorer but I imagine it would be the same. It seems like the phone just represents itself as a camera, even while locked, so Windows should see it the same way.
 
I began working with an intern, from high school, this past summer. I upgraded her phone to ios7 before its release, and she was thrilled to have it. Tragically, she died in a car accident two weeks ago. Her mother has come to me for help, she cannot unlock her daughters phone because she does not know her password. She simply wants the pictures her daughter took off the phone.

Would iExplorer work on a locked phone? I simply do not want to risk putting her phone into restore mode. The mother disabled the phone by incorrectly guessing the passwords. Please any advice would be greatly appreciated.

If she has access to any computers that her daughter may have "trusted" she may be able to just pull up the photos through File Explorer (in Windows) and drag them off or using iPhoto on a Mac. Just using the file system and no extra piece of software.
 
I should clarify...iExplorer is an ios recovery app from macroplant. Says it can recover from any iphone on any ios. So will it work on a locked iphone?

Running a mac. Want to be sure about what I do as I don't want to be responsible for data loss from the process. Its like she is holding a treasure chest without the key.

But thank you, she never has synced her phone before as she did not have a computer, so, I would think those photos would still be on the camera roll!
 
Ask if the mother knows her other passwords. Often people use the same number combinations in many passwords.

For example, if her gmail password is "stuff4678", her facebook password is "nkotb4678", and her twitter password is "4678iLUVjustin", then odds are her phone password is 4678.

I am speaking from experience; I was actually faced with a very similar situation recently when a close friend passed away and his parents needed help unlocking his phone.

Best of luck to you.
 
You might try PhoneView on the Mac. It'll give limited access to the iPhone's file system. You can find the photos in the file system.

I am not sure if it works with a phone on iOS 7, but it did work with my iPhone 5 when I was stock on iOS 6. PhoneView runs on PowerPC Macs (which is why I used it), but I believe it's universal.
 
advise the mother to take the phone with the receipt to apple. parental proof may be required but not sure.


there is no way to access a password-locked iphone otherwise.

if you are successful at restoring, it would delete everything, which would not serve the purpose.

I really really doubt Apple would do anything about that.
Parental proof or receipt doesn't matter. They don't remove or bypass passcodes.
 
I really really doubt Apple would do anything about that.
Parental proof or receipt doesn't matter. They don't remove or bypass passcodes.

I agree. This type of situation is unique and probably could not be handled at an Apple store.

If Apple is willing to do this at all (which I doubt), then she'd need to call them and insist on getting transferred until she reached someone with unusual technical access that might help--and they certainly wouldn't take the mother's word for it. I imagine she'd have to provide all kinds of documentation. In the end, it might not be worth it to recover a few photos.

We know Apple unlocks iPhones for the NSA so its certainly possible.
 
I agree. This type of situation is unique and probably could not be handled at an Apple store.

If Apple is willing to do this at all (which I doubt), then she'd need to call them and insist on getting transferred until she reached someone with unusual technical access that might help--and they certainly wouldn't take the mother's word for it. I imagine she'd have to provide all kinds of documentation. In the end, it might not be worth it to recover a few photos.

We know Apple unlocks iPhones for the NSA so its certainly possible.

Memories of someone who passed away are priceless.
 
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I began working with an intern, from high school, this past summer. I upgraded her phone to ios7 before its release, and she was thrilled to have it. Tragically, she died in a car accident two weeks ago. Her mother has come to me for help, she cannot unlock her daughters phone because she does not know her password. She simply wants the pictures her daughter took off the phone.

Would iExplorer work on a locked phone? I simply do not want to risk putting her phone into restore mode. The mother disabled the phone by incorrectly guessing the passwords. Please any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Does the mother have access to the girl's computer? She may be able to access the photo stream, or sync the phone with the computer and access the photos that way.
 
somefish.jpg
 
advise the mother to take the phone with the receipt to apple. parental proof may be required but not sure.


there is no way to access a password-locked iphone otherwise.

if you are successful at restoring, it would delete everything, which would not serve the purpose.

yup because some random employees at apple will have access to her phone :rolleyes:

lol
 
I'm very sorry to hear that.

To answer your question: have you tried using Image Capture on a mac? It never asks me for any type of passcode, albeit iTunes does.
(Check that "Delete after import" is not turned on. By default it is off, but verify just to make sure.)
 
Sorry to say, but this sounds more like a, "I want to see what pictures my wife/girlfriend (or both ;)) have in their phone so I'll make up this story and see if it's possible." type post.
 
Sorry to say, but this sounds more like a, "I want to see what pictures my wife/girlfriend (or both ;)) have in their phone so I'll make up this story and see if it's possible." type post.

How does it sound like that?
 
Start with getting her email account info > Then you can get her appleID /icloud.com account info > See if it's in photostream. Also facebook has an auto upload feature so check her facebook and see if her pictures were going there.

Her email account is kinda the key to most access.
 
Sorry to say, but this sounds more like a, "I want to see what pictures my wife/girlfriend (or both ;)) have in their phone so I'll make up this story and see if it's possible." type post.

It does seem like that...but I am confused about him knowing iExplorer but not ..so it seems ..actually trying it on the device.
It could also be a case of....the interns husband/fiancé has the phone and is trying to find out who the bad guy is.... and panic is setting in!
Or.........:)
 
This may sound incredibly stupid so I am sure I will be told so. However, as others pointed out maybe if story is true (which I believe it is) you could try emailing Tim Cook he has responded to lesser things to other people.
 
yup because some random employees at apple will have access to her phone :rolleyes:

lol

since you took the time to reply to this thread with sarcasm and little else, i must conclude you have no idea how to be of any help to the OP.


but your response is not only useless, but unoriginal as well, since another user has already pointed out that it is not apple's common practice to unlock phones.


in any event, if i were desperate to access the phone of a deceased family member, i would find out what my options are with apple. whilst there is little they could do at the store, perhaps they offer more ideas than you did, although that wouldn't be difficult.



there is no way for a normal user to access the contents of a locked iphone without the password or, as others pointed out, without a PC that recognises the phone. if the mother is locked out of the PC or totally computer illiterate, she can either lament herself or go to apple.
 
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scam ... this is bull. just some insecure, thief or perv trying to access someones phone


I agree 100% DO NOT help this thief. If he wants help then have him post a picture of his drivers license WO numbers and a land line phone number and work number with a electric bill with his name on it....THEN I WILL HELP
 
My iphone 5s is plugged into my windows vista computer right now and has the fingerprint/passcode enabled. I simply go to "my computer" then find my iphone as a device, double click on it, which brings up "Internal storage." I double click on that, and it brings up "DCIM." I double click on that, and my photos are all available. You can drag and drop them into another file/folder elsewhere. I just did it to test it and it worked.

As well, you can plug a passcoded iphone into another computer, and it should give a pop up that allows you to peruse the pics. This happens when i plug my phone into the computers at work.

Hopefully that helps.
 
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