this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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258
Signal messages retrieved from iOS notification, as seen in Prairieland federal trial (media.fedia.io)
submitted 1 day ago by frocalannifo@fedia.io to c/technology@lemmy.world
79 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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[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 29 points 11 hours ago (2 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.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours 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.

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] blargh513@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour 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.

[–] rezifon@lemmy.world 17 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 0 points 8 hours ago (2 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.

[–] eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 8 hours ago

That's a separate OS setting. Signal itself has its own setting for which content is actually sent in the notification.

[–] rezifon@lemmy.world -4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

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

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours 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.

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

You even double qualified it, prefacing with "I believe"

What an ass

[–] rezifon@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

“Signal devs could take care of that”

They did like eight years ago.

[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world -1 points 4 hours ago

Another reason not to own Apple products.

Don't think I've ever seen a company with shittier products better at tricking the gullible into buying them.

Anything you can do on a Mac/iPhone you can do on a PC/Android for half the price. Windows is a much more compatible and intuitive OS. And so is Android.

Source: I've worked in IT for over 20 years. I've worked with a ton of other techs. They all hated Apple. I actually just got done working on a Mac that our media department brought me because they were also tricked by advertising into thinking you need a Mac to do media stuff. It was a nightmare and my hatred for Apple has only increased.

P.S. Please don't bother telling me how Linux is superior to Windows. I know Lemmy likes Linux. I don't care. It's not as compatible as Windows and not suitable for a work environment. I have my problems with Microsoft. This comment is about hating Apple more.

[–] TheFrirish@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Honestly I have a much much much MUCH MUCH bigger issue with the fact that it is an American and Centralised service.

FBI still can't access it though.

[–] stringere@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 23 minutes ago) (3 children)

Is there a good decent e2e messenger not in the US? Would love an alternative.

[–] TheFrirish@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 1 points 2 minutes ago

As of now the most complete alternative (albeit controversial) is the decentralised SimpleX Chat. But it's not as easy to use as Signal.

[–] badgermurphy@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Good? No.

I think it is telling about Signal, though, that despite being in a privacy-unfriendly jurisdiction, federal authorities can only extract data from it when its users mess up.

I don't think you'll get much better until some of these other services mature more. Some of them seem painted into a corner where improving them further seems to involve rewriting big sections of them, like Matrix, so I am less optimistic about those.

[–] forestbeasts@pawb.social 3 points 5 hours ago

There's Matrix which is selfhostable but "good" is pushing it and the cryptography is a bit iffy (probably more incompetence than malice). Though selfhosting it means you don't need the end to end encryption quite as much... until the court gets involved of course.

-- Frost

[–] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 54 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

But Apple told me in an ad that they're better for privacy?!?

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[–] SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 101 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Basically, they didn't do this:

(I'm on Android, so I don't know what the options look like in iOS, but they should be identical.)

[–] blargh513@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

This is the problem, not what is shown in the per-app notifications. Don't turn on notification history.

[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 5 points 11 hours ago

Thank you internet stranger. I'm going to do this but fuck me if I can get my family to change their settings. They don't even know they can create a poll.

Don't ask me. I made all of you admins do I don't have to answer questions like how do I make a poll. Click the + button. Yeah. The one on your fucking screen right now.

No grandpa. We are not trying to figure out who is trans. No popop none of are naxies (I hope)

Anyway, click the +. Right there. That is how you create a poll.

[–] napkin2020@sh.itjust.works 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

They shouldn't have had to do this though.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 7 points 11 hours ago

there's a lot of things under fascism that shouldn't be needed

[–] Kupi@sh.itjust.works 9 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

They are similar

[–] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It would be nice if Signal let you do this per conversation.

It's sort of a victim of its own success, I use it for both things that do and don't require opsec

[–] rezifon@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

I imagine that the signal devs viewed it as a similar concern as when you mistype your password the error message doesn’t give you any way to know if the password is wrong or if the account doesn’t exist.

If only some of your notifications are sanitized then those are the suspicious ones. If all of your notifications are sanitized then none of them are suspicious. Or, at least, they’re all equally suspicious, opaque, and unidentifiable.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 7 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

and on some level it's important for good opsec that things that don't require opsec be done with good opsec

[–] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

That doesn't work in reality, as evidenced here, it's far more likely people compromise their security for convenience than the other way around.

Also sometimes opsec requires in get messages from certain chats quickly. Knowing where ICE are in a timely manner is important.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 17 points 22 hours ago (14 children)

You also don't need to do this on Android unless you are concerned about random people seeing the messages on your screen. Signal on Android does not use Google's push notification service

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 6 points 10 hours ago

as far as i know signal uses Google's notification service and if you want it to not you need to use Molly

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 hours ago

Signal on Android does not use Google's push notification service

Source? I'm pretty sure it falls back to a different mechanism when it doesn't find google services. And that is only on the version downloaded from their website.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/13290

[–] Quexotic@infosec.pub 8 points 11 hours ago

You most certainly do. I looked in my notification history in my founding of signal messages.

Then I turned off my notification history.

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[–] scytale@piefed.zip 53 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (9 children)

I learned about this a couple of months ago and I've since disabled previews in notifications. It's unfortunately the nature of how notifications are delivered to you. You should be fine by disabling message previews in your notification settings.

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[–] HumbleExaggeration@feddit.org 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

So you are telling me an app is encrypting the shit out of every message so it can secretly delivered to another person. An then the persons phone decrypts the message and broadcasts it to an apple server, so it can get send back and make the phone go 'ding'?

Shouldnt the notification be handled inside signal somehow, so this is the only app with the decrypted message?

What is next, everything from my ram needs to go through google servers to be transmitted to my display?

[–] RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 54 points 1 day ago

The Signal server would send a backend notification to the client app via the Apple Push Notification Service. The app is then able to wake up, at which point it fetches new messages (securely) from the Signal servers. The app then generates a local notification with a preview of the received message. iOS is then logging those messages.

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