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).

  • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    177·
    12 hours ago

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

    • Bazoogle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      11 hours ago

      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

    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      31·
      8 hours ago

      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.worldEnglish
        21·
        8 hours ago

        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.