There has already been much said about enhanced federal activity in social networks “including but not limited to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr” etc. in order to gather suspects’ information and use it as evidence in investigation. However, far not everybody can understand (neither do three-letter agencies I suppose) how they can represent such info in courts and to what extent it should be trusted.

The Onion News Network has a news webcast about Facebook program and its use in acquiring information during federal investigations and how greatly this project can save federal expenses:

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

Joking aside, although Facebook was not presupposed to carry out any federal mission like this, the fact is that Feds can very well use Facebook to gather more details of people they are looking for. The question is: how can they do this (if, of course, that’s not the ‘special project’ itself)? One of possible ways to get necessary data would be to set an account and make friends with the suspect, however there are some hidden rocks in it. First, the suspect might not like to make friends with “camouflaged” feds; second, even if you managed to get friends, your access to suspects’ details can be restricted.  Obviously, this is not an easy way to chase a criminal, on the other hand it provides an opportunity to establish and initiate personal contact with the suspect if that’s required.

What else can be done? Well, getting access to suspects’ computer is not a bad idea and most probably this would be point number one. There are many ways to seize and arrest suspects’ computers and as soon as it is accessible computer specialists start scrutinizing its content in search of any evidence. Here all ElcomSoft password recovery tools come into action and now also Facebook Password Extractor designed exclusively for Facebook accounts. 

The new utility gets Facebook account passwords saved in Web browsers on the local computer.  Pleasant thing is that ElcomSoft decided to help saving federal costs as well and made the software free of charge: “This is our duty!”, says unnamed ElcomSoft representative. The main Facebook Passwords Extractor features:

• The utility is absolutely free
• Easy exploitation – you simply start the program and it takes over the rest of work
• Supports all popular Web browsers and their versions: Internet Explorer till v. 9, Mozilla Firefox till v. 4, Opera till v. 11.10, Google Chrome till v. 11, Apple Safari till v. 5
• Works almost instantly
• Finds unlimited (i.e. all) number of logins and passwords stored in Web browsers on local computer.
• Does not matter how long and complex the passwords are and what languages they're in

N.B. Passwords stored in Mozilla Firefox and Opera protected with master password, cannot be recovered with this tool. For the first one (Firefox), however, we do have the solution: Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery. Let us know if you're interested in Opera master password recovery, too!

Working with it is quite simple. Right after you start Facebook Password Extractor, it searches Web browsers installed in the system and analyses data stored in every of the installed browsers, local databases, and cache. This allows finding all account information (login – password) that has ever been saved in Web browsers as autocomplete and/or authentication data. All found passwords to Facebook accounts are being decrypted and displayed in convenient form.

There is one “problem” with Facebook Password Extractor, though. It works with Facebook only  . If you need to reveal passwords to other social networks, get the Elcomsoft Internet Password Breaker instead. It is not free, but you always get what you paid for – not just [saved] passwords to social networks, but also the contents of ‘autocomplete’ fields (an extremely good source of information, including passwords), Windows Live Mail credentials and more.