The era when "deleting history" was equivalent to thoroughly wiping away your tracks is a thing of the past. The story of Mali and Liel Yahalomi, who were found in Argentina after consulting Google's artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini about their escape plan, is a reminder of a technological reality in which digital memory outlasts human memory.
In this case, investigators did not need extraordinary hacking skills. They needed a basic understanding of how cloud services and data work today. The key mistake made by the two, and by many others who believe they are operating inside a private space, is the assumption that deleting a conversation from the user interface is the same as erasing the data from company servers.
Artificial intelligence does not keep a personal diary. It is a system that processes data and maintains logs, caches and temporary information. Even when a user issues a deletion command, information may remain on a provider's servers for security purposes, to improve the quality of the service or simply as part of data-retention processes before the information is permanently removed or overwritten.
A (not so) temporary chat mode
While companies such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic now offer some form of "temporary chat" or related privacy controls, it is important to remember that any interaction with an external server leaves a digital footprint. Accessing that footprint may require a court order, but in some cases sufficient information can also be obtained through forensic examination of the device itself.
A comparison of today's leading AI tools highlights significant differences in their approaches to privacy. Google's Gemini is closely integrated with the user's Google account ecosystem, making data synchronization easier but also creating more links between activity and a particular account. ChatGPT, meanwhile, can in some circumstances be used without signing in, reducing the amount of activity directly tied to a specific identity.
Still, major AI platforms retain at least some data for a period of time, depending on the service, account settings and applicable policies. The legal distinctions between the companies are also significant: Companies with a physical presence in Israel, such as Google, face different local legal processes than companies operating primarily from abroad, affecting how Israeli law enforcement authorities can execute legal orders.
Google's Gemini; deleting chats and history won't help
(Photo: Getty Images)
Globally, approaches to digital privacy vary considerably. Europe, with its stringent GDPR regulations, has sought to impose far-reaching obligations on technology companies regarding the deletion of personal information, though the technical realities of model training and server maintenance can make complete removal complex.
In the United States, the approach is often more pragmatic and security-oriented, while in China the state has broad powers to obtain access to user data without the kind of prolonged legal battles seen elsewhere. Israel falls somewhere in between, seeking to preserve democratic protections and the right to privacy while confronting crime and nationalist violence that can evolve faster than legislation.
The technology underlying this case — the ability to recover deleted data — is not new. It is rooted in part in the way flash memory, including SSD storage, operates: Deleting information does not always mean that the underlying data is immediately physically erased, and it may remain recoverable until storage processes remove or overwrite it.
The gap lies in how we perceive our devices. We see them as companions or diaries, while in reality they are technical systems that manage logs and network traffic. The irony is that we trust machines to help manage our lives even as those same machines can become some of the quietest and most reliable witnesses against us — or in our favor, depending on what investigators are looking for.
In any event, it remains unclear exactly what data police obtained or what access they had to the Yahalomi family's digital activity. What is clear is that disappearing today requires considerably more effort than Mali and Liel apparently put into it.