Interested if anyone in the telecom or attorney business (or others!) know the answer to this.

For a company-purchased and owned cell phone, on a company-paid plan, is it possible for the actual text messages an employee sends and receives to be retrieved without the actual phone? In other words direct from the carrier?

I really think at some time in a prior life as part of a deposition (not my case, but as a respondent!) I've had some of these put in front of me in addition to emails, but I may be wrong.

I realize this might take some work through the carrier's compliance or other departments to effect, but is it even possible or do these messages not survive beyond the local device?

Bonus points for any point of entry to receive these from AT&T specifically....

If you've got any source for something definitive describing how and why they don't survive I'd love that too.

Google says! Link Buckfire Law

How To Get Text Messages by Subpoena

Today, more people communicate through text message than phone calls. Unlike unrecorded phone calls, text messages provide the words of a party.

However, these messages are rarely voluntarily produced by a party or even obtained through basic discovery requests. It is often a battle to get the billing records and actual texts, especially when they are damaging to a party’s cases.

When a party fails to produce the information, the primary option is to serve a subpoena on the cell phone provider. Federal law prevents companies from producing these documents without a court order or subpoena.

Text message records must be obtained from a party’s cell phone provider. An attorney can obtain a court order or subpoena to get the records directly from the service provider. However, there are limitations on what the provider can produce. Federal law makes a distinction between “content of the communication” and “records concerning the communication.”

Typically, cellular service providers maintain records of text message content for a very short period of time. For example, AT&T Wireless converts customers’ SMS cellular signals to internet data stored in its cloud, where it remains for 90 days before being deleted. Once deleted, the content is generally considered lost.

The only possible way to recover lost or deleted text messages by hiring a forensic investigator to inspect the phone. This can be very costly, but it is worth it if important information is obtained. These experts also help lay the necessary foundation for court admissibility at a hearing or trial.

ATT Says:

4. Charges and Storage Limits: The Service is provided at no additional charge. AT&T currently stores Your sent and received Messages for up to 90 days. Messages older than 90 days will be deleted from Your Messages cloud storage. However, the oldest Messages may be deleted from Your Messages cloud storage prior to 90 days, (1), when You have more than 50,000 Messages in Your Messages cloud storage, Message read and delivery receipts older than 10 days may be deleted before other Messages to get below this limit, or (2), when You have more than 4 GB stored in Your Messages cloud storage, Messages greater than 2KB may be deleted. Messages deleted from Your Messages cloud storage due to a storage limit will remain on Your smartphone until You delete them.
AT&T reserves the right to delete Messages and establish or change (1) limits as to how many Messages can be stored, (2) how long such Messages will be stored, and (3) charges for storing such Messages. AT&T further reserves the right to establish or change limits on periods of inactivity that may result in the termination of Your Messages cloud storage and deletion of any stored Messages. If Your Messages cloud storage is inactive for more than 90 days, the Service will be terminated without notice, and all stored Messages will be deleted (no Messages will be deleted from Your smartphone). If Your Messages cloud storage is terminated due to inactivity Your messages will remain on Your smartphone until You delete them.

If AT&T elects to charge for the Service, AT&T will notify You prior to implementing such charges. Your continued use of the Service after such limits are established or after AT&T notifies You of such charges, constitutes Your consent to be bound by those limits or charges. If You do not consent to such limits or such charges, Your only remedy is to terminate Your use of the Service, notwithstanding any provision of these Terms or any other applicable agreement between You and AT&T.

5. Message Sync: If the Service is activated on Your smartphone, the last 90 days of Messages on Your smartphone prior to activating the Service will be copied and stored in Your Messages cloud storage; these Messages will be removed 90 days after they are copied to Your Messages cloud storage. Messages read or deleted from Your smartphone will synchronize to Your Messages cloud storage. Messages sent, read or deleted from Your tablet, website, compatible smartwatch, or other applications that You authorize will synchronize to Your smartphone. Data rates consistent with

Your Wireless Customer Agreement https://www.att.com/legal/term...stomerAgreement.html and applicable data plan apply for Message Sync.

Link ATT TOS

years ago, (2013ish)I had a woman that worked for me decide to cheat on her husband with another coworker,

he, the husband, got the Cell provider to give him every text send, when he proceeded to print multiple copies off and put them everywhere he could so her coworkers could see

just printed no pics, which I was told were graphic (pics) and a lot of them

ETA,, he was the plan 'holder' or whatever they call the person whose name is on the bill
and not sure what carrier, may have been Verizon, or AT&T

Your best bet at recovering the actual text messages is to have access to either the sender or recipient devices (or both). If the AT&T backup and sync function is used with a compatible phone, the backup is stored for 90 days in the cloud. Normal cloud backup without backup and sync is a very short period of time.

Sender/recipient metadata along with the date and time of each text will be available from AT&T. Message content is more difficult to recover.

What type of devices are we talking about?


https://m.att.com/shopmobile/a...emenudropdown_0.html

quote:

Originally posted by Georgeair:
... is it possible for the actual text messages an employee sends and receives to be retrieved without the actual phone? In other words direct from the carrier?

It depends.

If it's straight-forward SMS/MMS messaging I would assume so, because I've seen "news" reports of it having been done.

If both ends are Apple devices: Then no, because iThings use iMessage, not SMS/MMS. (Whether it's possible to persuade Apple to cough them up, or even if they can, is another question. [A superficial search suggests not.])

If the people in question had the good sense to use a secure messaging app, with end-to-end encryption and that doesn't store the messages anywhere, such as Signal Private Messenger: Absolutely not.

If it's FaceBook Messenger or WhatsApp: Superficial research suggests they can be obtained from Meta (FaceBook's and WhatsApp's parent company).

Don't know about other messaging platforms, such as Telegraph.

Thanks for that y'all. Looks like in any event this is via court action and for a pretty limited window.

Primary device is iPhone, suspect recipients are as well for the most part (no disrespect to you 'droiders!). Getting the device isn't likely a viable option, certainly not without it being reset.

Have the metadata for numbers, times, etc. in hand.

If it's a company owned phone, and the company uses cloud based storage, then the company could simply retrieve all of the data stored within the cloud account. This wouldn't take a court order.

That should be an entire back up of the device (up to the data limits on the storage service). Everything from call logs, text messages, voicemail, apps, photos, phone book, etc.

Yeah, a company plan/company phone should mean they have access to all the messages - which is why it's important to keep a private phone as well.

I used to manage the cellular plan for my employer. I do not recall ever seeing anything in my administrative access to employee accounts that would allow me to see their text messages.

Metadata: Yes. Contents: Not as far as I know.