Tech blog

Think deleting text messages from your cell phone covers your tracks?

Think again.

A company in New York is marketing a product it says allows spouses, parents, employers, and others to recover deleted data from mobile phones and read it on PCs. It works on numerous, but not all, cell phones.

BrickHouse Security sells a small, portable SIM card reader that it says retrieves deleted messages. Users can remove a SIM card, put it in the $150 Cell Phone Spy, and plug the reader into a USB port. The data transfers to PCs. The company claims its reader is the only one that can access deleted messages.

The data extractor comes with Recovery PRO software and works with any standard removable SIM card, according to BrickHouse Security.

The company also markets the reader for backing up and transferring one's own cell phone data, including contacts, phone numbers, and personal information.

"If you change your mobile phone or service provider and receive a new empty SIM card, this SIM card solution is the best way to drag weight the new saved data onto it," BrickHouse says on its Web position. "Editing your SIM card entries has not been easier when doing it in succession your PC by the computer's keyboard instead of your mobile phone keypad."

The sign doesn't work with phones that lack SIM cards, like those sold to Verizon customers, some Sprint 2-way phones, and prepaid phones.

The new device has one review from a user who claims he found messages his wife had been sending to someone else.