How long do phone companies keep their phone records? This can be a critical question in civil litigation. Cell phone records can have a significant impact on the outcome of a civil case. The records can show a driver engaged in a phone call at the time of a crash, reconstruct a driver’s trips over a period of time, establish a connection and the strength of the connection between two people, or show a person’s whereabouts at a certain time to name a few possibilities. However, different cell phone companies have different retention periods. Last week I posted a survey on LinkedIn with the question, “How long to phone companies keep their records?” The options were:
- 6 Months
- 1 Year
- 2 Years
- 1 Year after user cancellation
- Forever
Which one did you choose? Whichever one you chose, you were correct! Congratulations! How can they all be correct? It depends on the situation. Let’s break it down.
6 Months
This answer is correct because it is how long the federal government requires phone companies to keep their records. 18 U.S. Code § 2703 – Required disclosure of customer communications or records – requires communications companies to maintain their records for at least 180 days. A preservation letter can be sent to the companies requiring them to preserve the records for 90 days from the receipt of the letter, and additional preservation letters can be sent extending the preservation for an additional 90 days each time.
But isn’t 18 U.S. Code federal criminal code? Why are we discussing this in relation to civil cases? The requirements in 18 U.S. Code § 2703 come from the Communications Assistance for law Enforcement Act (CALEA) of 1994 and was intended to assist law enforcement in obtaining communications records in support of criminal investigations. We can take advantage of the fact that the companies are required to maintain the records and send the companies subpoenas for the records we need in our civil cases.
Even though 18 U.S. Code § 2703 requires the companies to keep their records for 6 months, most companies keep their records longer. We will take a look at the individual companies and their retention policies.
1 Year
Verizon keeps their call detail records (CDR) for one year. We should make a distinction between the CERs and the billing records. CDRs are more detailed than billing records. CDRs record call, duration, and text times to the second whereas billing records show times to the minute. Since billing records show call start times to the minute, and durations to the minute, we end up with a two-minute window for the end of the call. This could be critical if we are attempting to determine whether a driver was on the phone at the time of a crash. So we definitely want to get the call detail records if possible.
At one year, Verizon’s retention policy is the shortest of all the major phone companies in the United States. Therefore, our goal should be to identify any significant phone number and issue preservation letters within one year of the incident.
2 Years
T-Mobile retains their CDRs for two years. Sprint used to have a retention policy of 18 months, but Sprint merged with T-Mobile in 2020 and will likely adopt T-Mobile’s retention policy. Interestingly, T-Mobile is a legacy GSM network, and Sprint is a legacy CDMA network. GSM and CDMA are network formats and are not compatible with each other. Therefore, T-Mobile and Sprint will have to maintain their own networks. In 2013 T-Mobile merged with MetroPCS, also a legacy CDMA network. MetroPCS maintained its own network until the customer’s old phones aged and were replaced by phones capable of working on a GSM network. A lot has changed since then. All 4G and 5G networks are based on GSM technology and most phones today are capable of working on either type of network. Nonetheless, I imagine Sprint will follow a similar path as MetroPCS and will be eventually absorbed into the T-Mobile network where CDRs are stored for two years.
1 Year after user cancellation.
This deals with the billing records. Most of the phone companies have a policy to retain account records for one year after the account has been cancelled. Therefore, if we are looking for records that may have already been deleted and are outside the company’s retention policy, we still may be able to obtain less detailed records. Conversely, if we are attempting to obtain records for an account that was cancelled over a year ago, but we are still within the company’s retention period, we would still be able to obtain the CDRs, but we would not have the subscriber information.
Forever
AT&T maintains records back to 2008 and does not delete them. If we are working on an incident over two years old, our best-case scenario is that the phone was on an AT&T network at the time of the incident.
What about other phone companies?
Some phone companies do not operate their own networks but rent time from the major networks and re-sell it to their customers. These companies are known as Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO). Companies like Cricket, Straight Talk, Boost, and Virgin are MVNOs. Since the MVNOs use the major networks’ infrastructure, we need to go to the major network for the CDRs and to the MVNO for the subscriber and billing information. The major networks will have the call details but will not have any subscriber or billing information. A return from a major network would include the CDRs but list the MVNO under the billing information. Some MVNOs are dedicated to one network. Cricket is always on the AT&T network while Boos and Virgin are always on the Sprint network. Other MVNOs, such as Straight Talk, could be on any of the major networks, though a single account is usually limited to one network.
Conclusion
I hope this explanation of cell phone company record retention times has been valuable. The major takeaway is that the phone numbers should be identified within one year of the incident so that preservation letters may be sent before the records disappear. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at ben@braveinvestigations.com. Also, I have preservation letter examples for each of the major phone companies. If would like one of them, please reach out to me and I will send them to you free of charge.