Even if you remove a text message from your phone, it may not be gone. That's because it could be stored on your phone company's servers. Normal text messages go from your phone to your phone company to the recipient. In most cases, that means the phone company retains a copy of messages.
Google doesn't have a Recycle bin feature for Messages. That means it is a little more difficult to recover deleted text messages that were not sent to the archive. If you enabled Google Drive backup, that will do the trick. Otherwise, you'll rely on third-party data recovery apps to retrieve the deleted texts.
They go to a kind of trash bin where they are stored for 30 days before they are erased for good. This means that you can restore your conversations for at least a month. Yes, that's right, conversations.
Once you delete a text message or conversation on your iPhone, it gets immediately moved to a folder within the Messages app called Recently Deleted. However, the tricky part is that only iPhones running iOS 16 or later allow users to view this folder.
Note: Deleted messages remain in your Recently Deleted folder for up to 30 days, and you can recover them.
In truth, when you delete something from your phone, it doesn't vanish instantly. The flash memory in mobile devices doesn't delete files until it needs to open up space for something new. It merely "deindexes" it, essentially forgetting where it is. It's still stored, but the phone doesn't know where or what it is.
Messages are backed up in iCloud and encrypted if you enable iCloud Backup or Messages in iCloud. iMessage is end-to-end encrypted. The phone number or email address you use is shown to the people you contact, and you can choose to share your name and photo.
Go to Settings > Backup & Restore. Select the latest backup and restore it. Your deleted text messages are there. Wait for the process to get your deleted text messages back.
When text messages were deleted from your Android, they will be temporarily stored somewhere on your device. So you can retrieve deleted text messages from Android without backup, with the help of a computer program. Besides, your text messages will also be saved in the backup files once you've backed them up.
Many people want to the answer. In fact, all text messages are saved on Android phones by default. Therefore, if you only have a SIM card, you cannot see the text messages saved on the phone. If you want to save them on the SIM card or SD card, you have to manually move them to the SIM card one by one yourself.
“iPhone messages are stored in a database in what is called SQLite format. These messages aren't immediately deleted from the database—they're instead added to a type of list called free lists,” he explains.
The telecommunications service provider (your cell phone company) has to transmit the SMS and MMS messages to their recipients; so yes, the provider has to store them, however briefly. Most providers retain messages for varying, not-so-brief, periods of time.
Restore iPhone Messages with iCloud Messages
You can see the Messages option under iCloud Settings on your iPhone, and when you log into icloud.com, you can see here is a messages icon. So if your iPhone messages get deleted, you can try to retrieve them from iCloud Messages.
You can only recover messages and conversations that you deleted within the last 30 to 40 days.
When you set up iCloud for Messages, your messages are stored in the cloud instead of locally on your device. You can see them on any device that's set up for iCloud and Messages, including your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac.
More of a revelation was the fact that Apple stores the information for 30 days. Choosing how to send messages is tricky and has caused Apple problems in the past, especially when a user switches from iPhone to Android.
Police are law enforcement agencies that have the right to ask for any data for security purposes. Many people hide their information in terms of photos or text messages from the police. However, police can effortlessly recover deleted Photos/Text/WhatsApp messages and almost everything from iPhone/Android.
But just because you delete a file, doesn't mean that the data is gone forever. Traditional spinning hard drives store data on polished magnetic metal platters (or glass or ceramic with a thin metal layer) and the store data by magnetizing sectors.
When you delete a file from your computer, it moves to the Windows Recycle Bin. But, if you empty the Recycle Bin or use the ctrl + delete option, the file is permanently erased from the hard drive. You can recover permanently deleted files only if you have reliable data recovery software.
Basically, the answer is a bit complicated but here's the short version: you should assume that data is never truly deleted unless the device has had a complete wipe. To understand why this is this case, you need to look at how data is generally “Deleted” (and those quotes are intentional) from devices.