Keeping messages on iPhone?

[question everything]

As I have posted before, even after four years I consider myself a newbie to the iPhone. It is basic SE and serves me fine with... yes, phone calls, emails, weather, calendar and communications via texting and Whatsapp.

But it appears that each contact is "allowed" only one thread. So messages are going back and forth and finally I just delete the whole threads.

I started wondering about it when there were talks about texts from and to Mark Meadows. How could he have saved and recalled individual texts from the gazillions that he had accumulated?

What am I missing? Yes, I am a dinosaur.

Thanks.

[usonian]

1. There's a setting, IIRC (which I can't find right now)

that asks messages to be "stored in iCloud" or on the phone.


Trying to simplify this. (I can get more complex later)

I think the clearest example is when I delete a thread on the phone, it's not deleted on my other devices. That means the messages are stored locally.

I can address encryption later. imessages are encrypted end to end, BUT they aren't if
A. You message to an android user. Those go as plain text, or
B. You unlock the phone. Everything is then visible to cops as well as to you. Even "signal messenger" highly encrypted messages.

I will say no more right now. I think this addresses your concerns.

There is the OTHER concern, that people serving the government are restricted in what they communicate, even by side channel, like Trump did when borrowing other people's phones to evade required logging of messages.

[question everything]

2. Thank you. Bottom line, I think, is storing on the iCloud which I do not use.

Thanks, again.