iPhone owners urged to change this key privacy setting after FBI recovers suspects deleted Signal messages

Date:
Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:08:43 +0000

Description:
Potential security flaws in both Signal and WhatsApp have been revealed, but one of them is fixable.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Tech Radar Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Become a Member in Seconds Unlock instant access to exclusive member
features. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting
your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Join the club Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards. Explore An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter The FBI has managed to retrieve Signal messages from someone's phone, even with the app deleted There's a setting you can enable to prevent this from being possible In other messaging app news, Telegram's founder has called
WhatsApp's encryption "the biggest consumer fraud in history" If you care about privacy, then theres a good chance you already use Signal for
messaging, and you might have assumed that this was enough to keep your messages private. But the FBI has just shown thats not the case.

As reported by 404 Media , the FBI was able to retrieve Signal messages from someones iPhone, even though the person had deleted the app. Given that
Signal messages have end-to-end encryption, youd probably assume that the
only way someone could read them was with access to the sender or recipients Signal account, which isnt what happened here. Instead, the FBI was able to access incoming Signal messages via the iPhones push notification database, which still received incoming Signal messages despite the apps removal. They werent able to access messages sent by the defendant, but they still had access to the other side of conversations. Article continues below You may like 7 WhatsApp settings you might have missed and how to use them Signal is being targeted by Russian hackers in a huge new phishing campaign, FBI says Hate WhatsApp on Android? Try my picks for 5 great alternatives

Fortunately, there is a way to prevent this from happening, as Signal has a toggle that stops content from appearing in notifications. To enable this, open the app and head to Settings > Notifications > Notification Content, and then select either No Name or Content for maximum privacy, or No Content if youre happy for the senders name to be retrievable.

Of course, this also means your Signal notifications will cease to show message content and potentially the senders name too, which could be inconvenient, so youve got to weigh up how much security you think you need.

Its also worth noting that this vulnerability presumably isnt exclusive to Signal, so you might want to turn off similar settings in other apps where possible. Is WhatsApp's encryption a fraud? WhatsApps encryption may be the biggest consumer fraud in history deceiving billions of users. Despite its claims, it reads users messages and shares them with third parties. Telegram has never done this and never will pic.twitter.com/2DYguybgoU April 9, 2026 And this isnt the only news about security issues with messaging apps today, as Telegrams founder Pavel Durov has posted on X that WhatsApp s encryption may be the biggest consumer fraud in history, citing a lawsuit that claims a backdoor allows WhatsApp and Meta employees along with third-parties to circumvent encryption in order to view users private messages. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

Its a troubling claim, but its one that WhatsApp has rejected , calling it categorically false and absurd. So, for now, its unclear whether WhatsApps encryption is secure or not, but given that it has been called into question, you might want to consider an alternative such as Signal if youre not already using that.

Telegram itself is another possible alternative, though thats had its own security issues, with, for example, a flaw recently being found that can expose user IP addresses . Today's best phone deals Contract Deals Sim Free gift Apple iPhone 17 24 months Unlimited mins Unlimited texts 10GB data 19 upfront 34.99 /mth View at Mobiles.co.uk See all prices Apple iPhone 17 Pro
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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone-owners-urged-to-change-this-key-privac y-setting-after-fbi-recovers-suspects-deleted-signal-messages


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