Text Messages & Other Miscellaneous Questions

[Crawley007]

As far as Proof of Relationship is concerned, how important is it to send in copies of your text messages or other chat messages?
I ask this because my phone company will not release this information even to me, and I have never been one to save my messages (other than single, specific, meaningful ones) so I don't know what to send with regards to our conversations.

We have TONS of photos, from every visit, with all kinds of family members, even photos of things like gifts we have bought for one another. We have several letters we have sent throughout the years, and a handful of emails, too. But as far as everyday communication, we don't really use anything other than texting and Skype (which we do not MESSAGE on, just cam-chat). Is this going to be a problem? Has anyone else had success without sending in messages?


Oh, and another random question that has nothing to do with the former... We know nothing about moving to another country, as neither of us have lived outside of our own. So we were wondering, when moving to another country, is there anyone/any place that needs to be notified in your country of origin before you leave? My wife is from the US and is moving to Canada, is there anyone she needs to notify once our COPR arrives? Or will her home country just figure it out when she fills out taxes for the next time? (We know that she'll still have to file US Taxes).

 

[ski]

My answer is specific to your question how do you download texts. What kind of a phone do you and your wife have? There is an app for iphones that lets you download your chat history. For androids, there is another app to do so. I know this because I just installed the app "SMS Backup and Restore" for my android phone and downloaded all the text messages over the year (since I had the phone that is). The downloaded file is a bit messy, but I cleaned it up and got an organized text file.

 

[WeeHippieElf]

As far as Proof of Relationship is concerned, how important is it to send in copies of your text messages or other chat messages?
I ask this because my phone company will not release this information even to me, and I have never been one to save my messages (other than single, specific, meaningful ones) so I don't know what to send with regards to our conversations.

We have TONS of photos, from every visit, with all kinds of family members, even photos of things like gifts we have bought for one another. We have several letters we have sent throughout the years, and a handful of emails, too. But as far as everyday communication, we don't really use anything other than texting and Skype (which we do not MESSAGE on, just cam-chat). Is this going to be a problem? Has anyone else had success without sending in messages?


Oh, and another random question that has nothing to do with the former... We know nothing about moving to another country, as neither of us have lived outside of our own. So we were wondering, when moving to another country, is there anyone/any place that needs to be notified in your country of origin before you leave? My wife is from the US and is moving to Canada, is there anyone she needs to notify once our COPR arrives? Or will her home country just figure it out when she fills out taxes for the next time? (We know that she'll still have to file US Taxes).

we had success without sending in chat logs or text messages. i screen-shotted our inboxes showing we'd exchanged emails over the years, but did not show what those emails actually said. you can do something similar with skype, screen-shotting the 'call from ___' / 'call ended, duration 1:23:45' messages which will show how often and how long you talk on skype. my husband sends me postcards on a regular basis, and i scanned the written part of one of them and then the picture side of all the others. we submitted approximately 30 pictures, including pictures of our wedding and all the guests at the reception, one or two of me with his family and one or two of him with mine, and one picture of the two of us in each of the various locations we've travelled together. we passed with flying colours, less than 8 months through processing.

as for notifying anyone in the States, i don't think so but i'm not certain. there will be a board for US applications where they should have more location-specific information.

 

[Crawley007]

Thanks guys! Unfortunately my phone is absolute crap and doesn't have anything of the sort in the way of apps. Hers WOULD have, but she bought a new phone and disposed of the old one a while back...

Glad to hear it might not be necessary, though.

 

[ski]

If you still have the messages on your phone, you could try to save them on your SIM card. Load the SIM card temporarily on your wife's phone and copy them to the phone. Then maybe try out the app.

Then again if you think you have enough proof without these messages, you needn't waste your time with this. It's just that I was a bit worried that I didn't have enough proof in terms of photographs but after getting the chat logs, I am pretty happy as these are quite detailed. I just have to delete the parts where we have been sexting lol.

 

[Bands89]

I have a similar case, I was asked for Txt messages or phone calls (we didnt send any at the moment of application because we are mostly together in Canada and in my country, so we spend a lot of time in the year together) for that reason we thought The travel tickets and other evidence were enough, well in November they asked us for txt messages or phone calls, we sent them both at the end of November but we still have no answer. My wife sent an email to Mexico in the fisrt week of January and they said our file was on queue to review. So It Is almost February and I see many applicants from April and even May receiving news and Passport requests, but it seems we are stuck, it gets me worry and makes me think maybe something is not right, we are thinking on write another e-mail to them.

What is your timeline and VO Crawley007?

 

[Crawley007]

Hmm that's kind of worrying. We have snippets of conversation in the form of selected individual messages we've saved, but not fully conversations.
Hopefully Skype call dates/times will do...

We haven't even sent the application yet! Though I can say with confidence that it will more than likely be Ottawa for a VO.

 

[ayrazar]

I sent Skype convos that show we had made calls, but blacked out the text from IMs. I'm not compromising my right to private conversation. But, maybe that was unwise. Either way, I refuse.

 

[Alurra71]

I sent Skype convos that show we had made calls, but blacked out the text from IMs. I'm not compromising my right to private conversation. But, maybe that was unwise. Either way, I refuse.

They may accept that as information that you're not in a true relationship and are trying to hide something.

To the OP:

If you are married, then the likelihood that you will need to send in text messages and such, if you have other proofs of ongoing relationship, are slim to none.

It is quality of the proof you send that your relationship is genuine, not quantity, that will make or break the application.

Best of luck to you all

 

[ayrazar]

They may accept that as information that you're not in a true relationship and are trying to hide something.

To the OP:

If you are married, then the likelihood that you will need to send in text messages and such, if you have other proofs of ongoing relationship, are slim to none.

It is quality of the proof you send that your relationship is genuine, not quantity, that will make or break the application.

Best of luck to you all

I seriously doubt that's how they'll receive that, considering it shows that we call every day. And I explained what I did and why on the pages. I am trying to 'hide' something, my personal business.

But, OP should obvi do what feels right.