How Samantha Murphy's digital data could be a crucial clue
Last Friday, Victoria Police revisited the Mount Clear area after extracting information from her mobile phone data, as they continue to investigate the Ballarat mum's disappearance.
Now, Former Australia Federal Police officer and professor of cybersecurity, Nigel Phair believes an "anomaly" or "change in the behaviour" of Murphy's data pattern may have prompted authorities to return to the area.
Detectives have previously said that Murphy departed her residence and ran approximately 7km through Woowookarung Regional Park with data tracking her last location as Mount Clear.
Phair who formerly headed investigations at the Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC), said that data from her iPhone and Apple Watch is particularly important as both devices constantly log her GPS coordinates, heart rate, altitude and can even detect falls among other biometric information.
"From the second that she walked out of her door, when out on the street, they would be able to see where she was moving and how she was moving," Phair told told Liz Hayes on Channel 9's series Under Investigation.
Additionally, her iPhone can be precisely located using triangulation from nearby cell phone towers.
Phair said that this type of data is extremely reliable and accurate, and he believes that the disturbance in this data the 7km mark, where it stopped tracking the information, reveals some form of sophistication.
"That means someone's done something active against those two devices and you have to know what you are doing to think I'm going to completely take these out," he said.
"It's not just turning them off, it's destroying them and then getting rid of that piece of evidence."
He added that tampering with these devices are particularly hard, because even if they may attempt to change SIM cards, mobile phones that are still on can still be traced.
"A device has two signifiers. It has a phone number, which you can change, call that the software signifier," he said.
"Then it has a hardware identifier, which is the IMEI number."
He said that police would be notified if the IMEI number was still operational.
"Regardless if you swap SIMs or don't use a SIM at all and just use it as a Wi-Fi-only device in a Wi-Fi area, it will always broadcast that IME number onto the network," he said.
Phair said that it is "highly likely" that police have the data on potential predators and are tracking them, as they can see whether someone else was using a device in the Mount Clear area the day Murphy disappeared.
Former Victorian detective Damian Marrett told Hayes the he believes Murphy's disappearance is the result of foul play, as changes in her digital data could suggest it was a "targeted attack".
He also added that if anyone else had access to her Find My iPhone app or any of her other data, they could easily track her using this information.
"Somebody who intimately knew the tracks that she takes or had access to be able to track her runs," he said.
"So she could have been tracked without those people having to physically surveil her."
Images: Under Investigation/ Facebook