Cellphones, at&t, att, crime, government, law, police, sprint, t-mobile, text...

How to Cover Your Text Message Tracks

It's Friday, so the mass of stupid and regrettable (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 embarrassing search 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 hangs on to your textual diarrhea the longest, for about two weeks, while AT&T dumps them after 48 hours, according to Slate's Explainer. We hit up Verizon, who said a "couple days, tops." There are a couple catches, though.

While with the major carriers, for the most part, no one (not even the cops) can dredge up stuff from years ago since it's been long deleted, watch out if you're on an employer's carrier, like Skytel, which touts its messaging archival features. The other major catch is that even deleted messages can be recovered directly from your phone, just like deleted data from any other storage device, because of the way deletion works—it just marks the data as okay to be overwritten, so if it hasn't been replaced by new data, it's still recoverable. It's a bit easier to snag from SIM cards (which can hold up to 30 messages) than from the phone's internal memory 'cause there are dedicated gadgets for doing so.

Bottom line though, text messages are still probably the safest way to go about your business (dirty or otherwise) without worrying about getting snooped (much safer than IM or email, which are notoriously logged)—as long as you wipe them off your actual phone and make it past the two-day mark carrier-side. An anonymous prepaid phone works even better, obviously. [Slate]

7:30 PM on Fri May 2 2008
By matt buchanan
17,013 views
28 comments

Comments

dustinwwhite at 07:43 PM on 05/02/08
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No wonder my crack dealer will text me but never picks up his cell!?!

THANKS GIZMODO
ph15h HATES ph15h at 07:47 PM on 05/02/08
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@dustinwwhite: That's why everybody texts sensitive information rather than calling on potentially illegal activities.
Amiash is not allowed at 07:49 PM on 05/02/08
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Connectedness Index: 211
Brought to you by Acura TSX

prepaid simcard FTW
Git Em SteveDave at 07:57 PM on 05/02/08
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Connectedness Index: 177
Brought to you by Acura TSX

Oh Giz, where were you when Elliot Spitzer NEEDED you?
GarciaConcern at 07:59 PM on 05/02/08
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And here I thought the major telecoms were all Bush hugging, wiretap monkeys. Look how easy they're making it for terrorists to LOL at our female population's lack of shame.
Mr.Purple at 08:05 PM on 05/02/08
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What about T-Mobile?
chonnes at 08:11 PM on 05/02/08
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Try as I may, I still can't find any squirrels pooping on bananas. Thankfully, however, I've learned the truth about whether squirrels poop at all. I love you Gizmodo.
Yeebles at 08:11 PM on 05/02/08
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What phone is this because it looks suspicisouly like the new iPhone posted earlier.
daftrok at 08:16 PM on 05/02/08
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LOL!
Ambigous Blob at 08:21 PM on 05/02/08
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Is it just me, or does "Skytel" suspiciously sound a lot like "Skynet"?... Sinister and Devious! Judgement Day is coming and it starts with out texts!
matt buchanan at 08:23 PM on 05/02/08
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@Mr.Purple: Waiting to hear back from them.
Cordfucious at 08:48 PM on 05/02/08
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Matt I have a Kwamae Kilpatrick on line one. He would like to speak with you..
shenanigans61 at 09:04 PM on 05/02/08
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So...is this a how-to, or an information article?
Cordfucious at 09:17 PM on 05/02/08
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yeah Matt.. what is that phone?
bigb252 at 10:45 PM on 05/02/08
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Its the LG Vu, expected to drop on AT&T this month.
devGOD at 11:49 PM on 05/02/08
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nice phone
LJN at 12:27 AM on 05/03/08
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Good to know. Now if only there was a text message recall feature with regards to careless SMS syndrome.

Feel free to replace careless with drunken.
mykola at 12:44 AM on 05/03/08
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what about t-mobile
matt buchanan at 02:23 AM on 05/03/08
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@Yeebles: It's my secret communicator with Chen.
puzz at 04:25 AM on 05/03/08
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@One2ManyCords:

Yes, there is something missing here. Kilpatrick's text messages were quite old and still somebody somehow retrieved them (if I remember correctly).
SomeoneUKno at 07:44 AM on 05/03/08
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@dustinwwhite: "The more you know..."
emkeane at 08:41 AM on 05/03/08
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This Chen fellow, he likes his pants.
TheManator at 10:00 AM on 05/03/08
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I think something with privacy laws (and the amount of data these things fill up) are the reasons why the cell phone carriers don't keep this information...cached for two days sounds about right too...
kiwy82 at 11:27 AM on 05/03/08
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I work with a telco in data mining and there is no one keeping these for more than 2 days and they are not retrievable outside the sms center cache, you can't get the data inside, it is simply not reasonable to store so much data on a physical disk.
jsntrenkler at 01:11 PM on 05/03/08
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Gizmodo you are the best
GIZisGOD at 01:58 PM on 05/03/08
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Curious, are BlackBerry Messager consider the same as IM?

What about PIN on the BlackBerry? Are they safe? Does the BlackBerry server keep them and can lawyers or courts collect them?
bourgeoisie at 07:15 PM on 05/03/08
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@GIZisGOD: Ooh all good questions, I'd like to know also. I use Messenger a lot on my bb.
The Lab at 09:23 PM on 05/03/08
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Just saying, it is probably way easier for NSA spying software to scan text messages for suspicious content than phone calls. Oh you think they aren't scanning? Well, they are.