this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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187
Signal messages retrieved from iOS notification, as seen in Prairieland federal trial (infosec.pub)
submitted 17 hours ago by frocalannifo@fedia.io to c/technology@lemmy.world
47 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).

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[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 12 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 -1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 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.