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Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

Who are those people having lot of time to re-read their old message history? I assume most people only read last several messages in a chat. This matches the real life conversations which are not stored anywhere. However, police will definitely be happy to discover that your many years messaging history is intact.

I would rather want a feature, like Telegram has, where you can set auto-delete of all messages older than N days.

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>Who are those people having lot of time to re-read their old message history?

Everyone who has to, say, prove that they kept paying their rent for a year without interruptions. You sent a photo of your money transfer from the bank app to your landlord, and he sends the "received" screenshot from his bank app.

Moreover, a lot (even most) people make personal notes by sending messages to themselves.

For me searching my old messages is really useful. I don't scroll back through history but I'll search for things like "plumber" to find the number of a plumber a friend texted me a while back.

>police will definitely be happy

Most people trust the police. This might not be justified in your state, but most people still do.

the only people that really trust the police are ones that never actually had to deal with the police (which may be a whole lot of people). however, if you ever have an unfortunate situation to have a run in with the police, there is a good chance you will not be all that trusting any longer. people trust the idea of police more so than anything else

Well, true. But even so, having the history intact is also a way to remove suspicions from yourself.

"Where were you during the event X? I was very far from the place you are interested in, as can be proven by this photo, sent to my grandma, have a look at the history in her phone."

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