Can a phone company tell you what texts you received?

[Brendan Burgess]

I have come across a few cases where a customer's credit card or debit card was added to a fraudster's wallet and used fraudlently.
The bank's defence is that they sent the OTP to the customer's phone number with a warning not to share it.
The bank also claims that they sent a text afterwards to say "Your card has been added to an Apple Wallet. If you did not do this, ring us immediately"

In the three cases I am aware of, the customers vehemently deny that they received either text.

Can the customers not ask their phone provider to provide a list of the texts actually received?
Is there a time limit on this?

 

[Sue Ellen]

Hi Brendan,

I had a look at the info on my Vodafone account and it goes back to May, '26 with 29 pages of 12 lines per page. Some of the items show either an SMS or phone number but most of them show Data. The problem would probably be that you would need to know what phone number the SMS came from in the bank. I only have a Ready To Go ac.

On my Android phone my text messages go back to 2015.

FOI requests do not appear to cover this but I see AI shows this if it is correct:

Alternative Rights to Access Your Data

• • Data Protection / GDPR: Instead of FOI, individuals in Ireland and the EU have a right of access to their personal data under Article 15 of the GDPR. You can submit a subject access request (SAR) to your mobile operator to see what personal data they hold about you. You can read more about your data rights via the Data Protection Commission Right of Access Guide. [1, 2]
  • What GDPR Requests Cover: While GDPR gives you access to personal data processed by the provider, mobile operators typically do not retain SMS message contents long-term (or at all, once delivered) due to telecommunications retention and privacy rules, meaning actual text content is rarely available.

 

[Freelance]

The simple answer to this is yes, they definitely have the capability to do this. But currently they do not offer access to this data.

If I look at the detailed bill which I receive for my mobile phone account, it lists all SMS messages I sent, showing the destination number and the date and time sent. Behind this is a database table containing header details for all messages with the sending and receiving numbers. So it should be easy to query this table requesting all messages sent to a specific number (i.e. your number) showing the originating/sending number and the date/time sent.

 

[getting_on]

The simple answer to this is yes

I don't think so.
They were required by law to store SMS metadata but not content and afaik, under GDPR, they are not allowed to store SMS content for longer than it takes to deliver the message or they give up trying .
The exception would be where the phone is being bugged under a court order

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Just to be clear, they would not be looking for the content.

Just to say that 086 381 2345 received a text from Avant's number on 1 June at 6.53 pm and received another on 1 June at 6.55 pm.

Or that no texts were received from Avant's number.