[OneofLittleHarmony]

I brought my old blackberry z30 out of storage.

I can't remember my device password.

I know my BBID and password.

I'm at 9/10 for password attempts.

I tried using blackberry protect, but it says it will attempt to change the password the next time the device is connected.

I tried to connect to my blackberry with link and blend on an old windows 7 laptop, but it's not showing up. It connects to the computer based on the sound, but it doesn't pop up in blend or link.

Is there any way I can save my data? Even if I have to back it up encrypted?

I took the SD card out, but I think I have that some where.

is there software that can recover anything?

[qnxdev]

I guess you'll have to wipe it, in order to make it show up on the Laptop.

If you don't care about data, just wipe it. If you know BBID and password, it's the best thing to do.

Posted with BlackBerry

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

I brought my old blackberry z30 out of storage.

I can't remember my device password.

I know my BBID and password.

I'm at 9/10 for password attempts.

I tried using blackberry protect, but it says it will attempt to change the password the next time the device is connected.

I tried to connect to my blackberry with link and blend on an old windows 7 laptop, but it's not showing up. It connects to the computer based on the sound, but it doesn't pop up in blend or link.

Is there any way I can save my data? Even if I have to back it up encrypted?

I took the SD card out, but I think I have that some where.

is there software that can recover anything?

If you want to spend tens of thousands on the recovery..... there are some labs that do this for law enforcement and BB10 was listed on the Israel groups site at one time.

Otherwise you have one more "guess".... make it a good one. Hopefully you saved most the data to your SD card and didn't opt to encrypt it.

[OneofLittleHarmony]

If you want to spend tens of thousands on the recovery..... there are some labs that do this for law enforcement and BB10 was listed on the Israel groups site at one time.

Otherwise you have one more "guess".... make it a good one. Hopefully you saved most the data to your SD card and didn't opt to encrypt it.

I was hoping either that:
1. You're overlooking this method if additional attempts to access your device.
2. Your an idiot and you didn't do such and such to have blackberry protect work
3. If you have your data backed up to an SD card, you can go use this program and try to guess your password there to read it!
4. There was a program that someone made to at the very least copy the data off the device in an encrypted format, or a way to back it up, so that if I ever needed it down the line, I could at least have access to it.

But no, I don't particularly want to spend 1000's of dollars on it. I mean, it's just kind of been sitting there for a while.

[bb10adopter111]

I was hoping either that:
1. You're overlooking this method if additional attempts to access your device.
2. Your an idiot and you didn't do such and such to have blackberry protect work
3. If you have your data backed up to an SD card, you can go use this program and try to guess your password there to read it!
4. There was a program that someone made to at the very least copy the data off the device in an encrypted format, or a way to back it up, so that if I ever needed it down the line, I could at least have access to it.

But no, I don't particularly want to spend 1000's of dollars on it. I mean, it's just kind of been sitting there for a while.

Unfortunately for you, BlackBerry took data security very seriously. Their device data policies were based on their corporate clients' needs, and they didn't want any easy workarounds that would let an unauthorized user access device data.

Posted via CB10

[Troy Tiscareno]

The data on the phone is encrypted, but a lot of people don't understand what that means until it's too late.

Encrypted data is, BY DESIGN, absolutely useless and unrecoverable unless you have the "keys" to unlock it, which in most cases means the password. Further, it takes only a tiny error or failure of a tiny portion of the storage media in order to corrupt an encrypted volume, so ALL encrypted data should be considered to be in danger of being lost at any moment, which means you should always have an UNencrypted copy of that data stored elsewhere. When we're talking about BlackBerry, that's a key distinction, because BB's own backup solutions create an ENCRYPTED backup file, which means it can only be restored to a similar device that's working. You cannot go into your backup file and extract a picture or document or contact you need - you can only restore the whole thing to a working phone.

What you WANT is to have your data stored someplace in formats that are ACCESSIBLE by you should you need a document, photo, video, song, contact, or whatever, and that means you need to either use a cloud sync service (Google or Outlook or something else supported) or you need to backup this data manually, and KEEP it backed up on a regular basis. If you do neither of these, you'll likely end up losing access to your data, and no one is going to be able to help you.

The lesson of many BitCoin users is instructive here. There are people who started "mining" BitCoin when it was very new and when it took relatively little processing power to "mine" them. At the time, BitCoin was worth virtually nothing, but it was cool and interesting to mine them. A bunch of people ended up with dozens or even hundreds of BitCoin, worth tens of dollars at the time. Today, those same BitCoins are worth many millions of dollars. But people would store their BitCoins in encrypted files or encrypted USB drives, and many lost interest and forgot about them for years, until the prices suddenly started to shoot up. Then, they realized that they had forgotten their passwords to these files or drives - or lost the drives entirely. Hundreds of millions of dollars - perhaps billions of dollars - of BitCoin is estimated to have been permanently lost this way. Imagine holding a USB drive in your hand that is worth $50M, but you forgot the password, and the encryption software gives you 10 tries before the data is destroyed...

If you're going to use encryption, you need to understand and respect how it works, and now important your passwords are. It is DESIGNED to be impossible to "work around", so have unencrypted backups and make SURE you know your passwords to any encrypted volume, drive, or device, especially if you don't use it daily.

[bb10adopter111]

The data on the phone is encrypted, but a lot of people don't understand what that means until it's too late.

Encrypted data is, BY DESIGN, absolutely useless and unrecoverable unless you have the "keys" to unlock it, which in most cases means the password. Further, it takes only a tiny error or failure of a tiny portion of the storage media in order to corrupt an encrypted volume, so ALL encrypted data should be considered to be in danger of being lost at any moment, which means you should always have an UNencrypted copy of that data stored elsewhere. When we're talking about BlackBerry, that's a key distinction, because BB's own backup solutions create an ENCRYPTED backup file, which means it can only be restored to a similar device that's working. You cannot go into your backup file and extract a picture or document or contact you need - you can only restore the whole thing to a working phone.

What you WANT is to have your data stored someplace in formats that are ACCESSIBLE by you should you need a document, photo, video, song, contact, or whatever, and that means you need to either use a cloud sync service (Google or Outlook or something else supported) or you need to backup this data manually, and KEEP it backed up on a regular basis. If you do neither of these, you'll likely end up losing access to your data, and no one is going to be able to help you.

The lesson of many BitCoin users is instructive here. There are people who started "mining" BitCoin when it was very new and when it took relatively little processing power to "mine" them. At the time, BitCoin was worth virtually nothing, but it was cool and interesting to mine them. A bunch of people ended up with dozens or even hundreds of BitCoin, worth tens of dollars at the time. Today, those same BitCoins are worth many millions of dollars. But people would store their BitCoins in encrypted files or encrypted USB drives, and many lost interest and forgot about them for years, until the prices suddenly started to shoot up. Then, they realized that they had forgotten their passwords to these files or drives - or lost the drives entirely. Hundreds of millions of dollars - perhaps billions of dollars - of BitCoin is estimated to have been permanently lost this way. Imagine holding a USB drive in your hand that is worth $50M, but you forgot the password, and the encryption software gives you 10 tries before the data is destroyed...

If you're going to use encryption, you need to understand and respect how it works, and now important your passwords are. It is DESIGNED to be impossible to "work around", so have unencrypted backups and make SURE you know your passwords to any encrypted volume, drive, or device, especially if you don't use it daily.

Troy, very well explained. The only caveat I'd add is that I would never keep an unencrypted copy of my data for backup purposes. The whole reason I encrypt data is to ensure its protected. Having an unencrypted copy for me would be like locking my front door and setting an alarm, then taking my side door off of its hinges.

Of course, the answer is to employ a robust backup strategy with at least three copies and to perform parity checks to ensure that every copy is bit for bit accurate. Encryption is designed to protect against data theft, but one also has to defend against accidental data loss, which is probably more frequent.

Posted via CB10

[Troy Tiscareno]

The idea is to have an OFFLINE, unencrypted copy of your data. External hard drive, USB thumb drive, etc. And you want that data to be in an open format, that can be read/accessed by you and/or imported into other apps without data loss. Again, encrypted data is very easily lost, so unless you are talking about extremely sensitive information, you probably don't need the offline backups of your backyard BBQ pics or your resume to be encrypted.

[bb10adopter111]

The idea is to have an OFFLINE, unencrypted copy of your data. External hard drive, USB thumb drive, etc. And you want that data to be in an open format, that can be read/accessed by you and/or imported into other apps without data loss. Again, encrypted data is very easily lost, so unless you are talking about extremely sensitive information, you probably don't need the offline backups of your backyard BBQ pics or your resume to be encrypted.

That's a matter of opinion. I don't keep any unencrypted data at rest anywhere. Neither does my business. It's frankly easier to simply encrypt everything all the time than it is to manage a mix of encrypted and unencrypted data. We use full disk encryption on everything, just like I do on my phone. We would literally have to install a separate hard drive to save unencrypted files!

You're correct that users who don't properly validate encrypted backups or who don't protect their encryption keys risk losing access to their data. But it really isn't difficult to put procedures in place that make that virtually impossible.

For example, at work we have two soft and two hard copy backups of all our encryption keys. Our two co-founders each have a sealed envelope with each other's keys, and our lawyers have two identical encrypted flash drives with all our company keys and instructions for use, one stored in their offices and one stored offsite.

For my personal data, in addition to daily and weekly automated encrypted cloud backups, once a month I make a full encrypted backup of my personal data which I give to a friend to keep at his house. The keys are also distributed, though the friend with the data does not have them or know how to get them.

Posted via CB10