https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bj3pxd/signal-disappearing-messages-not-disappearing

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that government prosecutors had seized years’ worth of a national security reporter’s phone and email records, in connection with an investigation into leaks of classified information. The indictment against the former Senate Intelligence Committee aide mentioned the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal; a tool used by many journalists to communicate securely with sources.

The news prompted several journalists and technologists on Twitter to remind people that when using Signal, there are ways to mitigate the risks of the phone getting seized. For Signal it is generally good practice to enable the ‘disappearing messages’ feature, which wipes chat logs after a certain amount of time.