What’s more, cellphone carriers typically keep basic details — or metadata — about text messages their customers send for billing purposes. Such records include the date and time of the message and the phone numbers the messages were sent to and from, but not the messages themselves. “They could get details of whom [Brady] texted and when,” said Nathan Freitas, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. But, “the actual text is what is really hard to get, if not impossible,” to get from a carrier.

Source: How hard was it for Tom Brady to delete his texts? – Business – The Boston Globe