Facebook Messenger allows users to send messages, photos, videos, and more to connect with friends and family. With billions of messages sent every day, many users wonder – does Facebook save my messages forever?
The Short Answer
The short answer is no, Facebook does not save your messages forever by default. However, there are some exceptions and caveats to be aware of.
Message Expiration
By default, Facebook does not store your messages indefinitely. Instead, messages in Chats typically expire after a set period of time determined by Facebook. According to Facebook, messages in active chats will remain for around 90 days before expiring.
For inactive chats, messages will expire after around a year. An “inactive” chat is one where neither person has sent a message in over a year.
So in most cases, your Facebook messages are not being stored forever. The platform removes old messages after a few months or a year depending on chat activity levels.
Exceptions
There are some exceptions where Facebook may store messages for longer periods or indefinitely:
- Starred Messages – If you “star” a message, it will not expire and will be saved indefinitely.
- Business Messages – Messages sent to or from a Business Page are saved indefinitely by default.
- Data Downloads – Messages may persist longer if you have downloaded your Facebook data for backup.
- Legal Requests – Facebook may retain messages if required by law enforcement or other legal requests.
So while most messages are eventually deleted, there are some cases where Facebook will store messages much longer, either by user choice or legal requirement.
Does Deleting Messages Remove Them?
When you choose to delete a message you’ve sent, does that fully remove the message from Facebook’s servers? The answer is maybe.
Facebook claims that when you delete a message, it is removed from their servers. However, there is likely some lag time before the message is fully deleted, especially if it was already seen by the recipient.
In addition, if the message was already reported to Facebook for violating their policies before you deleted it, it’s possible Facebook will retain a copy for investigation purposes.
In most cases, deleting a message should fully remove it in a reasonable amount of time. But for recently sent messages or violations, deleted messages may persist in backups or records for slightly longer even after being deleted.
Does Unsending Work?
Facebook Messenger allows you to “unsend” messages for up to 10 minutes after sending them. But does unsending a message fully delete it?
Again, Facebook claims that unsending eliminates the message from their servers. However, as with deleting, there may be a lag before unsent messages are purged from backups and caches.
In addition, if the recipient has already viewed the message before you unsend it, the message text may persist on their device or in the Facebook app’s caches locally.
Unsending offers no guarantee the recipient did not already view or screenshot the message. But it should fully remove the message from Facebook’s systems eventually.
How Facebook Uses Your Messages
While Facebook may not store all your messages forever, they do analyze and process messages to improve their systems and target ads and recommendations to users.
When you send a message, Facebook scans and analyzes the contents to understand the nature of the communication. This includes detecting spam/abuse, understanding intent and context, and profiling user interests.
Information extracted from messages is added to user profiles to improve ad targeting, content recommendations, and other Facebook services. Names, interests, relationships, and other details are catalogued from your conversations.
So in that sense, Facebook does retain and use data “inspired” by your messages indefinitely even if the verbatim messages are eventually deleted.
Privacy Concerns
Facebook scanning and analyzing private messages raises obvious privacy concerns for many users. The practice is disclosed in Facebook’s data and privacy policies, but many feel uncomfortable about their private conversations being parsed and processed.
Some measures users can take for more private communication include:
- Avoiding sensitive subjects
- Using end-to-end encrypted apps like WhatsApp or Signal
- Restricting app permissions
- Turning off ad personalization
But ultimately on Facebook’s own platforms like Messenger, your messages are being utilized to understand you and target content.
Data Downloads: Retrieving Old Messages
As mentioned above, one way messages can persist longer than the standard expiration windows is if you proactively download a copy of your Facebook data for personal archiving.
Facebook allows you to download all your data, including past messages, through their Data Download tool.
To use the tool:
- Go to your Facebook Settings
- Click on the “Your Facebook Information” tab
- Select “Download Your Information”
- Choose your desired date range (max is all time)
- Select the types of data to download (be sure messages is selected)
- Enter your password and click to confirm
- Wait for Facebook to prepare and send the download link
- Once ready, download the file(s) which contain your archived information including past messages
This allows you to recover and store old Facebook messages that otherwise would have expired and been deleted. However, Facebook warns that messages more than a year old may no longer be available for download.
You’re also limited to downloading your full account data once per day at most. So this method does not let you continuously archive a permanent real-time record of all your Facebook messages.
Third-Party Backups
In addition to Facebook’s official Data Download tool, there are third-party apps and services that claim to provide long-term backups of your Facebook messages.
Some popular options include:
| App | Details |
|---|---|
| Social Safe | Save Facebook messages to Google Drive or Dropbox |
| FBackup | Backup messages and other Facebook data to your computer |
| Backupify | Cloud-based backup for Facebook and other services |
The legitimacy, privacy, and reliability of these third-parties varies widely. Official tools like Facebook’s Data Download are more trustworthy sources for accessing old messages.
Facebook Message Deletion: Conclusion
To summarize the key points:
- By default, Facebook deletes most messages after around 90 days to 1 year
- Exceptions include starred, business, and legally requested messages
- Deleting or unsending messages may not fully purge them right away
- Facebook analyzes message data to profile users and target ads/content
- You can download an archive of older messages before they expire
- Third-party apps also offer Facebook message backups of dubious reliability
While Facebook stops short of storing every message forever, they do retain and leverage your data in other ways. Being mindful of what you share and limiting app permissions can help maximize privacy.