It ’s Friday , so the mass of stupid and too bad ( and maybe criminal ) text messages you wished you never sent is about explode exponentially , as it does every weekend . Google , as you know , keeps your sticky hunt history for “ AZN Squirrels Pooping on Bananas ” or “ Iron Man upskirt ” for 18 months . But how long do Verizon and AT&T hang on to your shameful SMSes ? Thankfully , not long at all . Sprint attend on to your textual diarrhea the longest , for about two week , while AT&T dumps them after 48 hours , grant to Slate ’s Explainer . We gain up Verizon , who state a “ yoke 24-hour interval , tops . ” There are a duad catches , though .
While with the major carriers , for the most part , no one ( not even the cops ) can dredge up stuff from age ago since it ’s been long deleted , watch out if you ’re on an employer ’s carrier wave , like Skytel , which brag its messaging archival features . The other major catch is that even deleted messages can be recovered forthwith from your speech sound , just like deleted information from any other store machine , because of the way deletion make — it just marks the data as okay to be overwritten , so if it has n’t been put back by raw data point , it ’s still recoverable . It ’s a bit easy to snag from SIM calling card ( which can carry up to 30 messages ) than from the phone ’s intimate memory ’cause there are dedicated gadgets for doing so .
Bottom pedigree though , text content are still belike the safest room to go about your byplay ( muddy or otherwise ) without worry about getting snooped ( much safer than IM or email , which are notoriously logged)—as long as you wipe them off your actual telephone and make it past the two - day mark postman - side . An anonymous postpaid earphone works even better , manifestly . [ ticket ]
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and culture news in your inbox day by day .
News from the future , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
