AboutDFIR.com – The Definitive Compendium Project
Digital Forensics & Incident Response

Preservation Letter/Search Warrant Templates

This section is a work in progress. This part of the site will contain template boilerplate language to include on various forms of legal process. It is highly advised to check with your local prosecutor and mind your local laws when serving legal process. These templates are purely meant to give you a running start to make your life easier. Feel free to modify it to your needs. Also, if there is any verbiage that is missing or could be improved upon, please let us know using this link!

If you’re looking to research where to send your drafted legal process, the best available resource is Search.org’s ISP List. This is a community-driven resource that relies on its users to ensure the content is up to date. If you follow instructions for a given provider and you learn of new information for that provider, all you have to do is include your updated information for the respective provider(s) and send an email to isplist@search.org. I have personally done this over 50 times within the last couple of years alone either by updating existing providers or adding new providers. 

If you have an IP address you’re following up on, ARIN is the best resource for locating who owns which IP address for the purpose of following up with legal process. Additionally, CentralOps.net has many free online tools for locating digital investigative leads for your investigation. If you have a phone number you’re following up on, FoneFinder has generally served me well in the past to identify a carrier. 

One last resource I will provide is for Law Enforcement only. For those in LE, follow the instructions using your work email address to obtain a copy of the Law Enforcement Technology Investigations Resource Guide found here. This guide has lots of resources that will be helpful for your cyber-enabled investigations. 

Links to the language templates can be found in the top menu of the site under Resources -> Preservation Letter/Search Warrant Templates. More will be added as time allows.

-Andrew