this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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TLDR: signal content in Apple notification can be retrieved even after signal app deletion.

I saw from this reddit thread: Signal messages retrieved from iPhone after uninstalling app. : signal

Referencing this news article: Pretti Killing May Affect ICE Prairieland "Antifa Cell" Terrorism Trial

The mention of signal is in court documents here: March 10: Federal Trial Day 12 - Support the Prairieland Defendants

Signal chat evidence from Sharp’s device (Exhibit 158):
Messages were recovered from Sharp’s phone through Apple’s internal notification storage — Signal had been removed, but incoming notifications were preserved in internal memory. Only incoming messages were captured (no outgoing).

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[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Android Settings>Notifications>History. If this is on, you can clearly see past Signal notifications, including sender name and message preview (if you enabled those in Signal). I don't know whether there is any 'hidden' history/cache that is stored even with notification history disabled.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world -3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

I know about the setting. Why are you saying that information is sent to Google's servers? As far as I have found, that information is only stored locally on your phone

Edit: If this is just about the fact it's on the phone locally, of course if they have your actual phone they can see it. Signal is end to end encrypted, but it isn't go to be encrypted on each end, otherwise you couldn't read messages. Them getting your actual phone is very different from them intercepting the communication without you knowing

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 hours ago

Read the original story. This whole thing is about retrieving data from the phone itself, not from Apple or Google servers.

[–] nforminvasion@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

The issue is that even if a message is deleted, message content can be retrieved through notification history.