Your personal messages despatched by way of the Sign messaging app may not be as hidden as you suppose — even should you delete the app. Reporting by 404 Media this week discovered the FBI was capable of extract messages from inside an iPhone’s notification system, lengthy after the consumer had deleted the privacy-focused messaging app.
In July 2025, a gaggle of individuals set off fireworks and vandalized property on the ICE Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, an incident that resulted in a single police officer being shot within the neck and 9 folks being arrested and charged with home terrorism. It was revealed throughout the trial, 404 Media reported, that the FBI was capable of extract Sign personal messages, which had been used as proof, from an iPhone’s notification database.
An FBI particular agent testified that the Sign app had already been faraway from the cellphone when the FBI seemed it over. A witness to the testimony advised 404 Media that the messages had been set to vanish, which is a function of the app. The app efficiently deleted the message, however the iPhone held onto it.
This is a giant deal, as a result of Sign Personal Messenger is an encrypted messaging service, and messages despatched by way of the service should not be seen if the app has been deleted from the cellphone. The FBI was capable of extract the info as a result of the messages had been displayed by way of the iPhone’s notification system, which saved these messages to the cellphone’s inside database.
Representatives for Sign, Apple and the FBI didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
The loophole presents a safety concern for iPhone homeowners who assume that their messages are ceaselessly personal in the event that they use an encrypted messaging service, and in accordance with John Davisson, deputy director of the Digital Privateness Info Middle, there is no clear purpose why these messages ought to nonetheless be there after the app was deleted.
“Somebody who deletes a safe messaging app fairly expects that their messages will not dangle round indefinitely or be retrievable if the machine falls into untrusted palms,” Davisson advised CNET in an e-mail. “Apple owes it to the general public to repair this drawback, and builders ought to contemplate warning their customers of the danger till that occurs.”
All 9 of the defendants in that trial had been discovered responsible in mid-March on prices starting from aiding in home terrorism to tried homicide.
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You’ll be able to hold your iPhone from saving your messages by not letting messages present up in your notifications.
How you can defend your privateness
Sign has a setting that forestalls this very drawback from occurring to others. You select to not show any data in push notifications, in order that in the event that they’re saved in an iPhone, they cannot be extracted later by the authorities. If you would like your messages to really vanish, that is the step you need to take.
To do that, open Sign and take the next steps. They need to be the identical on Android and iOS.
- Open the Settings menu and navigate to Notifications.
- Discover the place it says Present and alter that setting to No identify or message.
That is the entire course of. As soon as that setting is about, you may nonetheless get push notifications, however the notification will not present who despatched the message or what the message says. You will must open the app each time to answer to messages, however this ensures that messages aren’t saved on the iPhone’s inside storage indefinitely, able to be plucked out by an untrusted particular person.
“In our Surveillance Self-Protection information, we advise customers to examine the settings of their safe messaging instruments and alter them in accordance with their safety wants,” mentioned Thorin Klosowski, a safety and privateness activist with the Digital Frontier Basis. “Sign has the choice to regulate what (if something) is proven in notifications, whereas for different apps, you might have to dive into the settings of notifications extra typically.”
