I do not have many messages but my iphone 5s says messages take up 4.6GB of space.  When comparing with friends who have many more message, less than 1 GB is being used on their phones.  Why are mine taking up so much space and how do I correct that?

I do not have that many messages on my new iPhone 5s (maybe about 15 conversations and only one or two going back a little ways) yet when I go to Settings, Usage it shows that my messages are taking up 4.6GB of space.  When comparing with others (some who have hundeds of messages) they are using under 1GB for their messages.  Why are mine taking up so much space??

I found a post with this solution that worked for me - .Do a backup, then download ibackupbot. It lets you look into the contents of that backup. Look in system files>mediadomain>library>sms>attachments. I found a ton of huge files related to long deleted texts. ibackupbot let me delete all that old crap. I then restored the phone with that now modifec backup and Bingo! freed up 9 GB. No problems.
But note, if you are not technically inclined you probaly don't want to be digging around and deleting back up files. You delete the wrong thing and you could jack up your phone badly. Be careful.

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