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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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[–] 38 points 6 months ago (12 children)

That’s my biggest issue with notifications. Notifications should just notify you that something happened and you need to open the app to find out. Carrying actual data ON the notification is a no-no.

But what do I know, I’m an old developer not one of these modern vibe kiddies.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    A notification doesn’t have to carry any data in its payload; Signal devs could take care of that.

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  • [–] 19 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    Signal has supported this for many years. Users can choose full content notifications, name only, or no-content notifications.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    I believe what’s in the payload is not the same as what the user chooses to see. That is, it’s sent no matter what but the user can set what’s visible on the lock screen. I could be wrong though.

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  • [–] -4 points 6 months ago* (3 children)

    Why do you so confidently assert things which you do not know but merely believe without checking?

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

    Did I not qualify it by saying I could be wrong? What is so confident about that? Jesus Christ, nobody asked you.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    That's not the problem here. Showing a notification with content is not a big deal.

    In the case stated here, the big deal is that the notification HISTORY was preserved after removal of Signal. That's because both Apple and Google do the same thing. They keep a notification history. Not on a per-app basis, ALL apps notification history is stored.

    I know that on Androids, it is turned off by default and you can turn it on, so you get the impression that Android doesn't have this issue. I am going to guess as I do not own an apple anything that iOS has notification history turned on by default. This is the real problem. This is not anything Signal can control for unless they were to not support notifications which would render their app useless, so that's not an option.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago*

    The actual notification telling you there is a message shouldn't contain the content if its sensitive, it should only carry an ID to said message, and im certain this is what signal does. Thats like the most utter basic thing about notifications.

    Once that notification arrives, the system decides what to show you after fetching the message from the ID in the background. You can opt to keep that private or show it.

    In this case if you opt to show it, it leaks.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Yeah. It's not just signal either that could be an issue. Sure, I want my private messages to be private, but there are financial apps, business email, and many other bits of very sensitive information that could be captured in those messages

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