A few years ago, I just needed a Phone number to talk with my friends, and I found Textnow. I chatted with my friends, but eventually we didn't text anymore and my Textnow account just sat there. The past few weeks I've been deleting most of my account, I don't need, in preparation to switch to a different email provider. I found out how I could get my Textnow data and get it deleted. I submitted both forms and waited a week or two, and finally got it today. Here's my findings.

When you extract the zip they provide you are greeted by this. I will look at all the .json files to start off. The first json is calls.json and contains call metadata, I have about 60 entries

The next json is central.json and from what I can see contains data about phone number assignments, like selecting your phone number when you sign up.

The next json is inventory.json and contains no data, but I would assume it is for when you order a SIM card from them

Now this is confusing, ips.json has nothing in it, at all when I assume it should contain logs of your ip.

Now we get to the good parts, now we have messages.json, and it contains every message, recipient, sent from, etc. I have about 460 of these entries

Then we have user_profile.json and it just contains some simple account data.

But the last one is user_shard.json, and has some more account data and contacts.

Lets move onto the folders,

Client logs and voicemails and empty, but media is not. It contains all media sent and received, images, videos, and even voice messages in the form of a mp4.

Overall Textnow keeps a justifiable amount of data, that they share. Givin that the service is free even with ads I cnat imagin how much data the might be sharing.