These cases demonstrate the immense forensic need to understand how alternative-tech social applications operate and what they store about their users' personal information and activities. Capitol attack on January 6th, 2021, where the spreading of false information and extremist ideologies through alt-tech applications such as Parler and MeWe took place. As such, group effect of similar minded users on alternative-tech social platforms may lead to fostering events such as the U.S. In recent years, popular social platforms have seen a decline in their users that are choosing to migrate to alternative-tech social applications reinforced by frustrations of mainstream social platforms over alleged censorship of free speech and banning of predominant public figures such as the former president of the United States (U.S.). Mainstream social platforms boast billions of users worldwide. Finally, we analyzed the tools on the basis of their ability to extract digital evidences from the device and their performance are examined with respect to NIST standards. This useful data can easily be recovered by forensic analysts for future examination of any crime situation. From the results of these experiments, a considerable amount of essential data was successfully extracted from the examined smartphone. Data extraction and analysis are carried out using three tools, i.e., Magnet AXIOM, XRY, and Autopsy. The essential motivation behind the examination and tests is to find whether the data resides within the internal storage of the device or not after using these social networking apps. This research is aimed at performing forensic investigation of five social networking apps, i.e., Instagram, LINE, Whisper, WeChat, and Wickr on Android smart phones. Many of such crimes are carried out through social networking apps therefore, the forensic analysis of allegedly involved digital devices in crime scenes and social apps installed on them can be helpful in resolving criminal investigations. This momentous usage has also resulted in a huge spike in cybercrimes such as social harassing, abusive messages, vicious threats, broadcasting of suicidal actions, and live coverage of violent attacks.

The use of social networking apps on smartphones has become a dominating part of daily lives. Smartphone users spend a substantial amount of time in browsing, emailing, and messaging through different social networking apps.

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