Special services gained access to Signal correspondence, even though the app was already deleted. The same could happen with TG. How so, and how to protect yourself?

Reportedly, the data forensic extraction technology was used as part of an investigation into events at a migrant detention center in Alvarado, Texas. Riots occurred there: participants detonated pyrotechnics, destroyed property, and committed acts of vandalism on the center's territory. All defendants were later found guilty on several charges.

This is far from us, but at the trial of the riot participants, attention was drawn to the testimony of FBI special agent Clark Withorn.

According to information obtained from those present at the hearing, the examination was able to recover text messages from the iPhone of one of the defendants in the case — Lynette Sharp. Although the Signal messenger itself was deleted at the time of the check, fragments of the correspondence remained in the iPhone's internal memory.

The reason is how the iOS operating system handles notifications. If the messenger settings allow message previews on the locked screen, iPhone automatically saves this text in its internal notification database.

During physical access to the phone, special services used specialized software that extracted this database.

Experts noted an important detail: only incoming messages are stored this way; push notifications are not created for outgoing messages.

Of particular interest is that the FBI was able to recover even those messages for which Signal's auto-delete function was enabled.

How to protect yourself?

So far, there have been no precedents for Lukashenka's special services to carry out the same operation. But here's how you can preventatively protect yourself from correspondence being stored in the memory of push notifications.

Digital security specialists emphasize that this problem is not a flaw in Signal itself. It is a result of a fundamental contradiction between program privacy and the convenience of the iOS user interface.

To avoid such a situation, Signal provides a special setting. In the "Notifications" menu, you can choose what exactly will be displayed on the screen when a message is received: name and text, only the sender's name, or not display either the name or content at all.

Choosing the second or third option makes it impossible to save the text in the device's notification database.

The same, in theory, can be achieved in Telegram by disabling the "In-app preview" option.

And for guaranteed non-storage, you can totally disable "notifications."

404 Media notes that US law enforcement agencies are increasingly using push notifications as a source of data. This means that Belarusian or Russian special services will also try to act similarly.

Neither Apple nor Signal developers have yet commented on this situation.

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