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Mobile data recovery service launched

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NAIROBI, Kenya


A new system that makes it easier to recover data from a range of mobile communication devices will help improve the capability of Kenya Police to unravel crime that is facilitated through telecommunications firms. The system was launched on Monday by a private company, East Africa Data Handlers, which will work with Kenya’s security forces involved in the fight against crime in sharing of information.

“Our new system enables recovery of data five years back and from devices that are damaged or have been formatted,” said the company’s managing director George Njoroge in Nairobi on Monday. “It helps us provide enhanced data recovery capability that will help police get information that can be used as evidence in the court of law against criminals,” he said.

The data recovery system was launched at a time when Kenya has passed laws to allow public and private partnerships in a wide range of government services and projects, enabling the private sector to provide expertise where it lacks in the government and vice versa. The move will drastically improve the capability of the Kenya Police to unravel electronic crimes.

The services that the company will offer include mobile forensic service that includes analysis of a mobile phone to extract all the information that has passed through the phone backdated to five year. The service will come in handy for Kenyan into-crime experts because the country’s police service currently lacks forensic laboratories that can help in such analysis.

In the recent past, Kenya Police has solved complex murder cases with aid of communication over the mobile phone between the victims and suspects. But sophisticated criminals have formatted the information contained in the devices because of previous lack of a system that could even clone memory cards and open it without need of passwords. The increase in mobile-phone facilitated crimes in Kenya is partly because of the high mobile-phone density in the country.

The Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) estimated there are 29 million Kenyans owning a functioning mobile phone, meaning mobile tele-density in the country is 74 percent. Mobile phone crimes come in many forms in Kenya including situations where prisoners come up with schemes to defraud unsuspecting Kenyans through trickery to send money to a certain number to participate in a lottery game to kidnapping incidences where a mobile phone is being used as mode of communication and of receiving money by the kidnappers.

Kenya has ordered telecommunications operators to register mobile memory cards or SIM cards with the name of the owners to ease the tracing of mobile telephone numbers that are used to commit crime. The government is currently engaged in public education campaign requiring Kenyans to check whether their mobile phones are counterfeit as all counterfeit phones will be switched off next month. Police said such phones are not easy to trace, hindering the fight against crime.The new data recovery system will also come in handy for businesses that lose their data through crime, disaster or unexpected deletion or formatting of their data storage system. (Xinhua)

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LUKE MULUNDA
LUKE MULUNDAhttp://Businesstoday.co.ke
Managing Editor, BUSINESS TODAY. Email: [email protected]. ke
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