A growing number of people who have saved cellphone messages of dead loved ones as a source of comfort are becoming victims of technology upgrades and policies that are silencing those voices forever.

Lisa and Tom Moore of Terre Haute, Ind., spent $1,700 over the past five years to preserve their 19-year-old daughter’s voice mail greeting following her death in a 2008 car crash.

But Alexis Moore’s greeting was deleted during a Sprint upgrade that her family didn’t learn of until it was too late.

Other victims include a widow of an Army major killed in the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood and a Washington state man who lost his mother to cancer.

Experts say voice recording can help people maintain a connection to those who’ve died.