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Text messages don't actually get deleted

To all apple iPhone owners! Beware !! Apple iOS software stores every text message ever made on your phone.
You may think you've deleted them but there still there. I found out myself when I was using spotlight search to find something and noticed that some text conversations I made months ago were showing up!
These text messages were deleted a long time ago or so I thought.
When I contacted apple customer support, they told me the only way to permanent remove all text messages and ooh yes also emails , is to do a master reset, or restore to factory setting on iTunes. This intern removes all data from your phone. The downside to this is all your contacts , apps, and settings are erased. You also can't backup from previous because then it puts it back in ur phone. I know I have done it.

imac, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Sep 26, 2010 8:09 PM

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Posted on Jan 10, 2017 12:05 PM

How do I find a deleted text? I didn't want my dad to see these texts because he would tease me about it but I really want the text so I can reread them

121 replies

Nov 14, 2013 10:23 AM in response to gixxermike

hi! im new to apple, iphone 5 to be specific. I accidentally deleted all the sms from my iphone and i wanted to retreive? which way do i need to go through first? are third party apps like tenorshare and wondershare credible? if there's anyone out there who's willing to teach me how, on a novice level perhaps, please i need your help. Thanks and best regards!

Jan 12, 2014 7:59 PM in response to gixxermike

Yes, this issue may annoy many iPhone users, so did me. I'm annoyed with the deleted messages still there and haven't delete clearly. I used the common method:

Settings > General > Reset > Erase all Content and Settings. But it didn't work. Then I read an related article in the Internet: How to Permanently Delete iPhone Text Messages.

Maybe you can have a look. best of luck.


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Mar 11, 2014 3:50 PM in response to gixxermike

Does anyone know if someting has changed with the sms database in IOS7?


Trying to recover a deleted sms, and I'm looking at the SqLite db directly, and can see that there is missing rows in the SMS db. As you can see the sequence below are missing ROWID 32378 and 32380.


User uploaded file


Does the deleted rows end up in another database?

Mar 24, 2014 8:51 PM in response to Maxima.D

Maxima.D wrote:


It's true. Anyone concerned about his/her privacy should know this: What happens is this: When you delete something, any visible links to your files gets cut off. The files themselves don't get removed. that's how some websites such as this one and others, claim to be able to recover deleted files from iphones etc. and as a matter of fact, they are capable of doing it.


SOLUTION (as you pointed to it): Do a factory-reset. You will loose everything and it is not possible to recover anything from that.


;) yeah!! I agree with Max!!!
The authorities can probably recover it if they are suspicious of you. If you're involved in illegal activities, don't do it with text or email. BTW your email can be retrieved from your ISP as well as a record of where you've been on the web. Maybe an experienced hacker could retrieve it. Don't let any hackers have access to your iPhone.

Jul 20, 2015 7:25 AM in response to Raazhmed

Raazhmed wrote:


Maxima.D wrote:


It's true. Anyone concerned about his/her privacy should know this: What happens is this: When you delete something, any visible links to your files gets cut off. The files themselves don't get removed. that's how some websites claim to be able to recover deleted files from iphones etc. and as a matter of fact, they are capable of doing it.


SOLUTION (as you pointed to it): Do a factory-reset. You will loose everything and it is not possible to recover anything from that.


😉 yeah!! I agree with Max!!!
The authorities can probably recover it if they are suspicious of you. If you're involved in illegal activities, don't do it with text or email. BTW your email can be retrieved from your ISP as well as a record of where you've been on the web. Maybe an experienced hacker could retrieve it. Don't let any hackers have access to your iPhone.

Simply resetting an iPhone isn’t enough to prevent others from recovering using the data recovery tool known on the market. If you want to keep your iPhone data 100% safe from being recovered, you should write some new data on the old data, so the new data will take over the storage of old data, then recovery will be impossible. So it’s very important to completely erase an iPhone before you resell or give it to others.


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Jul 20, 2015 7:49 AM in response to jrdata

Regarding the question about the sms database changing in iOS7: There have been changes to the database in iOS6 and iOS7. The most significant changes were in iOS7.


Rows are deleted from the database when the messages are deleted, that is why you'll see the missing primary key (ROWID.) If you want to recover deleted text messages, you'll need a tool that searches the free-space in the sqlite file, which is the space where the deleted rows live until they're reused.


I work on a program, Decipher TextMessage, that does the recovery like this, in addition to a lot of other tricks we've learned following the many iOS and Messages app releases 🙂


(Note: As I mentioned, I am a developer for Decipher TextMessage, so I stand to benefit from the link made above to our software. If you're interested in seeing what an analysis of the database file can find you though, you might find our free trial interesting!)


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Jul 20, 2015 7:26 AM in response to fordgt500

Actually, you can easily read the text messages and contacts (including email addresses) in an iTunes backup file using the iPhone backup extractor and save to your computer selectively. You don’t even need to know the location and file names of the backup files, since the software will automatically detect all the backup files on your computer and let you preview the content before you save to the computer.


In addition, you can also retrieve deleted text messages on iPhone directly from the device or by extracting from iCloud backup with the help of an iPhone data recovery tool.


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Text messages don't actually get deleted

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