What happens to my messages and tags after a snapshot?

Question

Will a snapshot erase all the messages and data I've posted onto the tangle? I reference the Hello World example https://learn.iota.org/tutorial/payments-and-messaging-leaderboard where users can embed messages into their transactions, via signatureMessageFragment of the transaction object. After a snapshot, will the messages be erased? If yes, does this also include tags?

Answer 1

Snapshots generally net off all transactions and only store the final account balances, not any meta data.

For example, see https://github.com/domschiener/snapshot/blob/master/snapshot.csv

Answer 2

Yes, all tags, messages, ... will be deleted. Only balances will be stored by all full nodes.

But not all nodes have to do snapshots:

Where does all Tangle data goes after a Snapshot?

Answer 3

Snapshots will delete all data, but full nodes can offer services to maintain the entire history of the tangle or subsets of the tangle in exchange for IOTA, for example.