Can my text messages be looked at?

soundsystem00

soundsystem00

Bluelighter
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Mar 19, 2005
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I share a cell phone plan with my grandparents. They pay for the bill and the account is under their name. I recently got text messaging, and I went way over my limit. My grandmother is currently reviewing the bill online, and she is very nosey. I can 100% guarentee she is going to try to read my messages. Our carrier is Cingular.

Is she going to be able to read each individual message I have sent/received? If so, this could get ugly.
 
Since the account is in her name and she pays the bill, they're basically her messages. So I'd say yeah, she can probably read them if she wants.
 
^Thanks for the reply. Why have I only gotten 1 reply in 48 hours? Did I post in the wrong place for this kind of question? I couldnt think of a good place at the time.

Yes they do pay the bill. This kind of worries me, I guess I wil be more cautious in texting than I was previously.
 
She'd probably have to specifically request transcripts, otherwise it will just list the numbers you texted and received texts from.
 
Cingular/AT&T will NOT provide transcripts of the actual text contained in your SMS messages, even to law enforcement, even with a court order. They do not store them any longer. This will vary for other companies.

I am a customer and was recently trying to get copies, with a court order, to use in a hearing as evidence. They mailed me a copy of this new policy.
 
soundsystem00 said:
...Why have I only gotten 1 reply in 48 hours? Did I post in the wrong place for this kind of question? I couldnt think of a good place at the time...
Click to expand...
No, this was the right place. It's the weekend, bro'. People are out getting into trouble with their text messages. ;)

I'm sure more responses will accumulate over the next week or two.
 
It might be worth checking with the wireless carrier to see if they store this type of information in the first place. As mentioned, there are privacy concerns, regardless of who is paying for the account, so it is not as if message transcipts will be as readily available as the list of numbers that you've dialed, for example.
 
QuestionEverything said:
Cingular/AT&T will NOT provide transcripts of the actual text contained in your SMS messages, even to law enforcement, even with a court order. They do not store them any longer. This will vary for other companies.

I am a customer and was recently trying to get copies, with a court order, to use in a hearing as evidence. They mailed me a copy of this new policy.
Click to expand...

Fuck yes. That hit the spot! Thank you very much, Done deal!
 
QuestionEverything said:
Cingular/AT&T will NOT provide transcripts of the actual text contained in your SMS messages, even to law enforcement, even with a court order. They do not store them any longer. This will vary for other companies.

I am a customer and was recently trying to get copies, with a court order, to use in a hearing as evidence. They mailed me a copy of this new policy.
Click to expand...

I don't believe it.
 
^You don't believe that I attempted to get them with a court order, or you don't believe that they have put a new policy in place and will not provide them/do not store them?
 
I don't believe they tell the public the truth about their policy. Just like AT&T doesn't tell the public the truth about their NSA dealings. Maybe even law enforcement can't get the SMS logs for criminal trials with a subpeona, but I'm pretty sure intelligence agents and the Pentagon have forced every cellular company who publicly claims not to be logging everything to at least be forwarding it to government servers somewhere. You'll never really know though, because these kinds of cases aren't prosecuted, they're taken care of in military/intelligence ways.
 
Ah, ok. That is what I assumed you were hinting at, but wanted to make sure.

I don't necessarily take a stance on that issue specifically. I will say though, that AT&T/Cingular did use to store and provide the text of SMS messages, they stated this publicly, and would provide them under the circumstances I stated above. Their new policy (I believe it went into effect September or October of this year) is that they don't even store them anymore therefore are unable to provide them.

Without continuing to derail this thread, my closing statement;) is that it seems logical to me that they wouldn't want the extra trouble, time, and expense storing and providing those would cause. I'm not above believing that they do though.
 
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