With our investigations, many times the question we get is: How can you get a text message if it’s been deleted? If I delete my text, how can it come back to haunt me? Well, when a text message is sent, the records of that event and that transaction aren’t only on your phone. And when you delete it, really, you’re just deleting that one piece of it that’s on your phone. That text may exist in dozens of other places that can still be retrieved.
The Invisible Echo: Multiple Data Points
When we do investigations on recovering digital records or digital forensics, here are the sources that can be checked to see if the record exists. First of all, on the other side of that conversation, the recipient of your message has a copy of it on their phone. And when you delete it on yours, it doesn’t delete it on theirs.
Carrier Records: Eternal Witnesses
In between your phone and their phone, you know how many places that text message existed. First of all, your carrier. Let’s say you have Verizon. Well, Verizon has a copy of that text message on their server. When you delete it off your phone, it doesn’t go away from their server. In fact, many cell phone providers keep their records forever. They never delete them. They have backups, just like you have backups on your computer. The major carriers keep cell phone records forever.
The Cloud: A Digital Archive
Depending on how you have your phone set up, you may have a copy of all of your cellular records in the cloud. Android, Apple, and the major carriers all have a cloud backup option that you may have turned on by default. Your photos that you take, even if you delete them from your gallery on your phone, may be stored in your cloud account. If that’s the case, think of whatever else could be in there: your text messages, your phone call records, your voicemails.
Eternal Voicemails: Unseen Records
Look, you get how many calls a day? You get 10 to 15 calls a day. People leave your voicemail. You deleted the voicemail. The same thing happens with voicemail. You delete it; it just deletes it from your phone. The original voicemail message that was a sound recording is a file, just like any other file: a picture, a photo, or a PDF file. It’s just a computer file. It happens to be a voice. When you delete it, it just deletes it from your phone. Your cloud server may still have it. In fact, the only reason your phone prompts you to delete it is to free up space on your phone. Those voicemail messages also many times last forever in your cloud or at the carrier of your phone system, your phone account.
Third-Party Archives: Hidden Repositories
Well, it could also exist in third-party backups. If you are working with a company like Box or Google Drive, many times you have an automatic setting to save those records, save those documents, and save those voicemails.
Your Car: A Silent Witness
Even things like vehicle infotainment systems… Your car is probably one of the biggest computers you use every day that you don’t even know about. It could be bigger than your phone. If you don’t use a desktop computer every day, your car could be your biggest computer that you have regular access to.
Location Data: Unintentional Tracking
Your phone is constantly pinging Bluetooth devices all around you. That’s how air tags work with Google or tiles. They always ping Bluetooth devices. So, you can get a sense of where a device is from what other devices are connected to it. It doesn’t allow connections unless you give permission, but it’s always pinging them. And that goes for Wi-Fi networks.
Digital Footprints: Unseen Traces
Photos, maps, emails, text messages, website connections… Here’s another one: many times, if you are in a distant location from your house, your phone will ask you, “Do you want to connect to this Wi-Fi network?” It’ll give you a list of the networks. Even when you drive away and go somewhere else, the networks will still show up on your phone.
The Invisible Trail: Digital Shadows
How long does that last for? Well, some Wi-Fi networks save all this data on the chip on that router and on that modem for a very long period of time. Some commercial networks download it and save it back up. So, you may find that a person was at a location just by going through their history of what’s on their Wi-Fi router.
Conclusion: A Digital Paper Trail
No matter where you are right now, if you look at your phone’s network activity, it’s probably trying to connect to a dozen different devices. Even in your office, you have different networks—different Bluetooth and Wi-Fi networks. Your TV is probably Wi-Fi, and it’s probably trying to connect or at least giving you an option.
The Unseen Surveillance: Constant Connectivity
The sources of digital data to track a person’s phone and activity go well beyond what you think you’re deleting from your phone at any given time.
