What does “pending”, “failed” or “not delivered” mean?¶

A message may remain pending, show as failed or appear as not delivered.

Evidential caution: that the recipient rejected the message or that no communication attempt occurred.

What this means¶

Pending usually means the message has not yet completed the service’s sending process. The sender’s device may be offline, the application may be waiting for connectivity or the service may be attempting to process the message.

Failed can mean the application could not send the message, but the reason may vary. The problem could involve connectivity, an expired session, account restrictions, provider outage, invalid addressing or a temporary device issue.

Statuses can change later. A pending message may send when the device reconnects. A delivery event may arrive after an apparent failure. Screenshots taken at different times may therefore show different states without either being fabricated.

Where the distinction matters, compare sender-side records with recipient-side evidence, provider events or later account activity.

What to check or do next¶

• Preserve the exact status, symbol, service, time and device condition. Record whether the device was online, whether other messages were sending and whether the application later updated.
• Do not infer blocking, account deletion or deliberate avoidance from the status alone unless other evidence supports it.

Evidential limits¶

Not delivered may mean the service did not confirm delivery to its expected destination. It does not necessarily explain why. The recipient device may have been offline, the account may have been closed, the sender may have been blocked or the message may still be queued.

In reporting, describe what the application displayed rather than assigning a cause that the evidence does not establish.