The incident sheds further light on the different steps our data takes to get from point A to B, and how sometimes it gets sidetracked to point C without us even realizing it. Your carrier, be it a big name or a smaller shop , likely works with at least one of hundreds of companies like Syniverse to deliver texts, payments, and other data across mobile networks, according to CNBC. Think of them as digital post offices, receiving, packaging, and shipping your messages — and think of this server outage as a mail tub that was left behind, never making it out to your mailbox. Syniverse says it usually only keeps undelivered texts for 24 to 72 hours as it attempts to send them out before deleting the data, but the offline server inadvertently allowed the company to retain and, months later, send the messages.