Text messages don't actually get deleted

Yes, I perform forensics on backups all the time for my clients. I'm a private investigator and certified digital forensics examiner. Use tools such as Cellebrite, Oxygen, MPE+, Lantern and a few more.

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!

page not found... the link does not work 😟

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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there have many iphone deleted message recovery software. So, if your deleted. you can get back in seconds.

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A) I first reset my complete I Phone. They were still coming up wish really ticked me off.

B) I then decided to start with the letter (A) and all the numbers came up. I clicked on the first name that did not belong and when you do, go to Info and in red you will see Remove From Recents.

IT WAS DELETED! TRY THAT.

You can completely erase the deleted data on iPhone, see the method 5 in the tutorial:

How to Erase iPhone

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Yes, the text message you have deleted actually still exist.

You can use some recovery tool to get them back,

such as iPubsoft iPhone Backup Extractor

Run the software and connet the iPhone and computer.

Select the deleted text message from your backup file.

The last is choose the "Recovery" button.

please let me know if you could help me restore deleted texts. I have a few I need to get back...

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.

Does the deleted rows end up in another database?

In an Itunes back up file, does any of these long file names show the email addresses used on the iphone?

If so, which one??

Thanks Hidden Wizzard for all the advice so far-I've learned alot!!

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.

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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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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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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