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Signal messages retrieved from iOS notification, as seen in Prairieland federal trial (europe.pub)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] 1 point 6 months ago (6 children)

Source? I am not seeing anything about that. The only problem I have seen on Android is when applications use firebase for notifications, which is most play store apps to be fair, just no FDroid apps or some privacy preserving apps

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (5 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.

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  • [–] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 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

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Gotcha. I misunderstood. I didn't think it would be just that, because of course if they have your phone they have the contents. Signal encrypts end to end, but if they have the end device of course it isn't encrypted.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Well, kind of. They could have your phone, but you have a strong passcode locking Signal, or you could have uninstalled Signal, as in the OP. In those cases, the full Signal conversations would be protected, while any notification history stored by the system would be recoverable.

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