this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
206 points (98.1% liked)

Technology

83564 readers
2806 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
206
Signal messages retrieved from iOS notification, as seen in Prairieland federal trial (infosec.pub)
submitted 18 hours ago by frocalannifo@fedia.io to c/technology@lemmy.world
53 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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).

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 8 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

Well, of course. All notification contents go through Apple's servers (or Google's in case of Android).

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 18 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Not all, no. There are alternatives on Android:

The good news is that alternative methods for push notifications are available, namely SSE (Server Sent Events) and WebSockets.

Additionally, a new open source project, UnifiedPush is becoming increasingly popular. UnifiedPush is an open source, private alternative to Google for notifications.

https://tuta.com/blog/google-push-alternative#alternatives-to-google-push

Signal for android uses web sockets for notifications

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

Signal for android uses web sockets for notifications

Only in absense of google play services.

Source: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/13290#issuecomment-1848588865

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 12 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Why would a notification need to leave my device at all?

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 17 hours ago

Because it's FAANG

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 hours ago

A lot of notifications originate off your device.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It's not because of push notifications. the message is not sent to firebase, just a signal that the app should do a refresh.

It's because the system saves the notifications apps posted to the notification menu.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 0 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

As I already replied om one of your other comments:

It’s not because of push notifications. the message is not sent to firebase, just a signal that the app should do a refresh.

Is is 100% because of firebase. Here is an example payload from firebases official document:

{
  "message":{
    "token":"bk3RNwTe3H0:CI2k_HHwgIpoDKCIZvvDMExUdFQ3P1...",
    "notification":{
      "title":"Portugal vs. Denmark",
      "body":"great match!"
    }
  }
}

https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/customize-messages/set-message-type

Notification history is purely local to the device. It is not sent to any servers.