Perhaps someone can answer this for me. I've seen several comments here saying WhatsApp doesn't store conversations. The other day someone sent me a picture on WhatsApp. Before looking at the message I was going through my photo gallery and noticed a random picture I didn't take so I deleted it. When I went to look at the message it was just a blurred out photo of the picture I had deleted and when I clicked it it said the media didn't exist on my SD card. Now, if I log into the web version that picture is fully visible. This suggests to me that they keep at least the pictures on their server. So is it only the text portion they don't keep?
Recently my Z10 got bricked. The only backup available was from April 2014. I bought a new Z10 and restored the backup on that phone. I was expecting that all WhatsApp messages and pictures received between April 2014 and the restoration date would not be available. But, WhatsApp did somehow pull the messages and pictures from recent months. So, where did it restore the messages/pictures from? From other contacts' phones?
WhatsApp definitely stores your messages on their server. They have to. If you send a WhatsApp message to someone and their phone is off, does it bounce? If not, they are storing your messages at some point.
Just because they say they don't store them forever really doesn't mean much, and I am pretty surprised by how many people on HN keep repeating it.
Yes, the photos are indeed stored on the server for some amount of time. If you dig into the obfuscated messages.db file from WhatsApp (I don't know about now, but it used to be encrypted with a known key, and there are tools for decryption available), you'll see that it stores a tiny JPEG thumbnail and an HTTPS URL on their servers where the photo can be retrieved. Though if you try to get to older pics you are just presented an error message that it's no longer available.
