The FBI had managed to get hold of Signal messages sent to the phone owner, even though the phone owner had already deleted the Signal app from their phone.
The trick worked because Apple's iPhones stored notifications received by the phone in a separate database saved on the phone.
So, authorities did not access Signal or its messages directly, but rather the notifications shown to the phone user about new messages - which also included information about the sender and the content of the message.
Following the publicity surrounding the trick, Apple has now changed the iPhone's notification history function, and it is no longer possible to recover the content of notifications marked as destroyed by the receiving app from the history data. And if an app is deleted from the phone, the iPhone's notification history simultaneously destroys all notifications received for that app from its history data.
The update has been rolled out in iOS operating system version 26.4.2, earlier this week.
Note that no action is needed for this fix to protect Signal users on iOS. Once you install the patch, all inadvertently-preserved notifications will be deleted and no forthcoming notifications will be preserved for deleted applications.
-- Signal (@signal.org) April 23, 2026 at 1:38 AM
Signal already thanked Apple for its quick action.
Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 26 Apr 2026 12:27
