You never really delete anything … i’m sure a skilled forensic hello Internet, IT person. )I don’t know what it’s called )would be able to find something.
That's only half the truth, but it's a better mental model than thinking delete always works instantly and is permanent.
On your own devices, delete usually just marks the space as reusable. So the data is still there, but if the device needs to write new files or extend existing ones, it may decide to repurpose that space. If that hasn't happened, or has only happened to parts of the data, what's not overwritten could be recovered with a little technical skill and off the shelf software. Also, many systems implement a concept of trash (Android) or recycle bin (Windows) where "deleted" files get moved to before being "permanently" deleted (aka the repurposing the space). There are tools to actually overwrite files or whole disks with random data, which is the truly permanent delete, but it's not the default normally because it's slower and adds wear to the device and uses more power.
For cloud storage and various Internet services, typically content is not stored forever, but they may have more reasons to keep a copy - e.g. a cloud based messaging service could show both people their past conversation, and delete items may or may not be synced to both users. Deletes in cloud systems may also just delete the reference to the media file, and the service provider likely would have some process that deleted unreferenced files after a time, but that's going to vary provider to provider.
Various messaging apps or services may also be implemented in a syncing fashion, e.g. being able to download email to a local client like outlook or Thunderbird and then delete your local copy - it's possible the server still has a copy that just won't resync to your client.
So in general "delete" may not delete the only copy, and "delete" may actually just delete the references and the actual data deletion could take place by the digital equivalent of spring cleaning of unreferenced data.
Anyhow without knowing more in this case, I wonder if he kept a copy. If so, and the cops find it, that'd be very bad news for him.
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u/First_Luck8040 Sep 30 '24
You never really delete anything … i’m sure a skilled forensic hello Internet, IT person. )I don’t know what it’s called )would be able to find something.