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sunnyph
New Member

How to browse iTunes unencrypted backup for SMS text messages?

My iPhone paid App fails to export few SMS messages from iTunes backup and because of security reason , I prefer not to upload the App Developer my iTunes backup because I assume there is no method to scrub confidential information in the text messages. 
Is it possible to browse text messages via Power BI?

2 REPLIES 2
MAwwad
Solution Sage
Solution Sage

No, it is not possible to browse text messages via Power BI as Power BI is a business intelligence and data visualization tool and is not designed to access or display personal text message data.

Additionally, Power BI primarily works with structured data, such as data stored in databases or spreadsheets, and does not have the capability to directly access or extract data from mobile devices such as an iPhone.

If you are experiencing issues with your iPhone paid app, it would be best to contact the app developer or the support team for assistance in resolving the issue. They may have suggestions or solutions to help you access the missing text messages.

Since iPhones are also used in Business, I would think that there is a Business need for this. As for the Data I refers to, it is iTunes and not expecting Power BI to iPhone. 

 

I also found following information but prefer a more simpler method than investigate the technical aspects to browse the text messages.

 

 

The name of the backed-up folder
is a string of 40 hexadecimal digits, and represents a unique identifier for the
device from where the backup was obtained. This unique identifier appears to be
a hashed value since it was the same unique name given to the backed-up folder
by iTunes on both Mac and Windows operating systems. Within this folder, there
are hundreds of backup files with long hashed filenames consisting of 40 numbers
and characters. These filenames signify a unique identifier for each set of data
copied from the iPhone memory [Bader and Baggili, 2010].
The files found in the backup directory can be classified into five categories:
• SQLite3 database files;
• Plain text plist files;
• Binary plist files;
• Multimedia and text files.
• Non-standard data files.
The SQLite3 database files store a single database each in SQLite3 format. Each
database can contain an arbitrary number of tables. The plain text plist files are
Extensible Markup Language (XML)-like text files. Their binary counterparts are
XML-like files stored in binary format which can be easily converted back to a
plain text format with the Mac OS X plutil utility. A more in-depth description of
those file types is provided in sections 3.2 and 3."

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