this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026

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264

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

81 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).

(page 2) 31 comments

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[–] x00z@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This has been done before and is already pretty well known.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

When I saw it hit the news before, it was because they were reading notifications off Google servers, which contained at least part of the message. Not because they were reading the device's notification history.

[–] x00z@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

That's true. Technically it's different. The end result is kind of the same though.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This is not always the same on Android. Any app from FDroid will not use Google's push notification service because it is proprietary, meaning it violates the rules for FDroid. Signal does not use Google's notification service

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day 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 1 day ago (3 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.

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.

[–] olorin99@kbin.earth 4 points 21 hours ago

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

Yes the notifications were retrieved from the phones local storage. Firebase was not involved in anyway.

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[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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

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[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago

Because it's FAANG

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 1 points 20 hours ago

A lot of notifications originate off your device.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day 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 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago

my reply on another thread: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/24730726

[–] frocalannifo@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

Added the full content of the original post to the body of this thread.

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