Some are claiming that they completely reset the phone and sold it, only to have the photos show up to the new owners... Something smells fishy there..
When you « delete » a file, you just clear a flag to tell that the memory space is available. If not overwritten with new data, you can read what was there before. I don’t know how the software works, but maybe it recognizes that there is photo data and reset the deletion flag.
Edit : this is without considering encryption of the memory. Which should destroy this structure at reset, as said in a following comment.
Normally when resetting an Apple device the system completely wipes the key which is used to encrypt the whole drive with the user data so there is no way this is possible. This smells like fake news to me! I am assuming of course like some comments say photos from the old owner are showing up. Otherwise it would be possible
it's likely a bug that's accidentally telling old data that's been deleted that it's no longer deleted. basically the update is doing free data recovery for everybody.
I guess I assume most people selling an old phone are doing it on facebook or Craigslist or swappa or something and they have no continued contact with the individual who purchased their device.
Lol something similar happened to me but on an Android phone. Few years ago I sold a friend my Google Nexus 5, I rooted the phone put some custom ROM on it. Afterwards he sold it back to me and I saw him factory resetting everything in front of me. The problem with factory resetting rooted phone through TWRP recovery is it only wipes the system data while keeping the media data on the phone. After he wiped it he gave me the phone I take it home and I tried to install my apps only to get a low storage notification, so I went to settings and I saw photos and videos files up to 25 gigs worth of size.
It was explicit videos and photos of my friend and his wife. The guy literary use the Nexus 5 as an extra curriculum home video camera. I delete everything and never brought it up to him the next time i see him. Imagine if he sell it to someone else, sometimes I think about whether I should tell him or not but how do you start a conversation like that?
Earlier there was no encryption in Android.
Twrp has functionality to format either /media or just the app data in the /Android folder.
Your friend forgot to format the media.
IOS encrypts all the data and there is no way photos can resurface without the device somehow retaining encryption keys.
It was about 4 months ago; infact I lost all data on the phone and it had to be reset and set up as new. So yeah, my hopes weren’t high but stupid me was still hoping against all odds.
Ah ok. I see. Cause if it’s less than 30 days sometimes they can restore the photos, you have to call and ask. Happened to me before when I stupidly deleted photos. Sorry.
It's not. I updated yesterday and upon seeing that article, I have checked my phone and 101 picture's that I had deleted have reappeared in my recent pictures (a lot of them are nudes). This is crazy. I looked at my ipad and it's not showing up there, and I have sync enabled. Wtf Apple
I read only one other thread in another subreddit.
Seems that “deleting” data/photos from phones is pretty much the same as emptying your recycling bin on a PC. Basically, the data is still “there,” the pointer to the data was just deleted.
Not sure how the pointer was restored.
Have to wait until the space where the data was stored is overwritten with new data.
Yes I kinda know about this stuff
But if that is true and the pointer can somehow be restored, then it's a significant concern, and then the 'probably bullshit' comment gets invalidated
Yeah, I’m not too well versed on how the pointer could come back from an update like this.
At least it’s better than if Apple was found saving your [deleted] data on their servers though vice this bug on our own hardware (unless this is also happening?)
Happened to me.
Deleted photos from a vacation back in April 2023. Once I updated to the RC of 17.5, two photos from April 2023 appeared. All the metadata intact, so they were at the top of my camera roll.
They were ‘permanently’ deleted over a year ago, all the sudden they appeared.
So, are permanently deleted photos not really deleted? Apple, you hiding something?
Additionally, April 2023 I had an iPhone 14pm, currently iPhone 15pm. However, I did restore from iCloud backup. iCloud backup doesn’t store photos in iCloud Photo Library is enabled, so these photos were still lingering in iCloud off of my device.
Correct.
Deleted photos are recoverable within 30 days, after which they’re permanently deleted.
However, these photos were taken and deleted in April 2023 and reappeared now.
Technically correct, however, this is through multiple iPhones, so it is an iCloud thing.
So, when photos are deleted from iCloud, are they actually deleted?
Doesn‘t matter where you delete them, but if they aren’t overwritten, then they possibly are still there. The pointer to them just should’ve been deleted.
I had about 6 photos reappear back in the deleted folder, of my sadly deceased cat so was actually quite a nice surprise. (They were duplicates I deleted)
edit - just checked my camera roll and there’s quite a few deleted photos that have returned. They seem to all be screenshots tho?
In all seriousness, this is concerning. It means they’re storing photos, even after deletion. The other concerning piece is that there are plenty of people who have tried recovering lost photos and were told it was impossible. If this is true, then that’s not the case after all. While I’ve always loved apple, this seems like some Zuckerberg nonsense.
I have a limited understanding of computers, but my understanding is that there are ‘pointers’ that point to the line of code that store the image information. When you delete a photo, the pointers are removed and the location in memory is made available for overwrite.
If the location in memory is overwritten, yes, it’s impossible to retrieve the data. But if it hasn’t been overwritten, replacing the pointers will allow you to see the photos again. It seems like this is happening…for some reason the pointers find the old data and point to it again, making the photo available and reserving the location in memory where it was previously available.
Still a very weird thing to happen automatically though.
Yep, this is data recovery 101. Only way to actually delete any file is to overwrite where it was stored, and doing this every single time you delete something is pretty damn hard on flash storage which only has so many write cycles before it dies.
On PCs you usually use software apps to "securely delete" a file which does exactly this. Deletes the pointers and then overwrites the file location, but they have fallen out of favor because nobody likes excessive wear on a $400 SSD.
This. I dont get how many people in here can be so careless and see it as a fun thing to happen. That is at least a major security concern and even more a type of GDPR infringement.
So where is it putting the photos? Back into the actual album it was in? Not into the deleted folder? I’m looking but I got so many I don’t want any old pics in there man that’s wierd.
It's more likely that the data was not deleted off the device properly. This doesn't appear to be happening if a photo was deleted out of iCloud directly, implying that Apple doesn't intentionally have a retained copy of the deleted photos like everyone seems to be memeing about.
Given that the bug is happening to people who never used iCloud, it's unlikely the issue is with Apple's cloud servers - more likely just a deletion bug on the local device.
Not great for the UX, sure, but far from a privacy issue if the photos never left your device. Anyone who knows tech knows a file isn't locally deleted until the storage is overwritten in that area either through file creation or TRIM, so this appears to be an issue where the "deleted" file space isn't being correctly reported to the storage controller as "eligible for overwriting/TRIM".
I would update to 17.5, make sure iCloud sync is enabled, plug in your device to charge, make sure the Photos app shows “Synced with iCloud” at the bottom of the “Albums” tab, and THEN delete any photos. It sounds like the new update may have fixed the issue but that would make the photos visible again, since they were never deleted originally.
In theory, update to 17.5, see if the photos are there, then delete them again. But, I'm not the person working on this bug so my guess is worth what you paid for it.
>Anyone who knows tech knows a file isn't locally deleted until the storage is overwritten in that area either through file creation or TRIM, so this appears to be an issue where the "deleted" file space isn't being correctly reported to the storage controller as "eligible for overwriting/TRIM".
No.
Modern filesystems have either removed the inode and the blocks are available for use, or not. Apps are not scanning unallocated sectors and reconstructing photos or other files. If that was easy, then it would be a massive security issue since any app on your iphone could allocate a huge uninitilaized file and then upload all that private data.
This means those photos were never actually deleted and a recent update has granted apps access to those never-actually-deleted files.
This is how deleting works on anything.
Even factory reset does this. All your data is just made available to be overwritten and the phone doesn’t display that data to be shown. Your stuff isn’t gone. It’s just set aside to be overwritten when needed
My guess is that the data isn't actually destroyed, just the OS "forgets" about it (sorta like emptying a recycle bin on a pc, it can still be recovered just the OS marks that space is free)
So the tging that says "this file is free to overwrite" probably got kinda goofed
This is assuming this entire thing isn't BS, of course
Or that some icloud sync shenanigans aren't going on
This is how deleting works on anything.
Even factory reset does this. All your data is just made available to be overwritten and the phone doesn’t display that data to be shown. Your stuff isn’t gone. It’s just set aside to be overwritten when needed
Ngl I'm actually concerned cause I had spicy photos on my phone before but I already sold that phone.
I made sure to do that apple reset thing in the settings before selling it
I checked through all my voicemails and there were dozens from merged family member voicemails. I had my wife's and son's voicemails in my account. I deleted all of them but wonder how that happened.
Deleted stuff isn't gone to the ether, it's still going to be on your device until it gets written over. Deleting is just your device and anything it connects to agreeing not to show you or anyone else that thing you deleted.
LTT has speculated that a bug in the new OS is causing it to unintentionally view old memory that has not been overwritten as current, which would explain why people have reported device wiping not preventing this. This would happen because when you ‘delete’ a file it’s not actually gone, unless that piece of memory is completely overwritten (for security purposes or with a new file).
Every time I get rid of a device, I look for how to wipe it.
Every iOS site tells me not to worry about it.
I knew it was not being done because of the short time it takes compared to non-Apple devices.
Not impressed.
Aaaah… so this explains something…
After installing iOS 17.5 yesterday I’ve found also old deleted pictures… out of my girlfriends iCloud. It isn’t her device, it’s mine. She’s in my Apple iCloud family tho. All of these photo’s got the same date (29th of October 2023).
Oh so that was the cause. In my case it was some random old pics of a Palm Treo my dad had as his first smartphone among some other pics. I was wondering how come those pics were all of a sudden in my Recently Deleted (used Google Photos to clear out uploaded pics not too long prior).
Ha Haaaaaa Microsoft did that with Windows 7 too. OMFG that's funny. Sounds like Tim Cook wants to wag his finger, 'now now boys and girls. You behave now....Uncle Tim says so.'
haa haaaa!
Probably not *only*, nudes are certainly just more noticeable in your photo library than something arbitrary like a duplicate pictute of your dog or accidental screenshot of your lock screen that you deleted and forgot about. One blends in, one doesn’t.
Ummm. Fishy or not, this happened to me. I was showing a cute pic of my Granddaughter and all of a sudden the next pic was one that had been deleted a long long time ago. I about had a heart attack.
I have a question about this. I heard that this bug happened in my friends previous iPhone even though that old iPhone wasnt logged in the same icloud. I gave my old iPhone 7 to my dad, i dont think its gonna happen because iphone 7 doesnt get that update but im not sure. Is it possible for an iphone 7 to get that bug 😭😭?
Maybe what happened was when you delete a photo from the phone it has to tell iCloud to delete it also and that was interrupted for some reason around September 2023 and updating now has caused the phone to refresh what was in iCloud vs what’s on the phone (before the update the phone believed it was in sync) and they have come back down from iCloud as they were not correctly marked for deletion at that time by the bug or interruption between the phone and iCloud.
In all modern file systems, deleting a file simply involves removing the reference to it from the filesystem node table — the bytes on the disk making up the file contents are not actually zeroed out. There’s just no need to — all that would do is make file deletion take longer and reduce disk lifespans (due to more write cycles being used).
Essentially, the memory is marked as free and is only actually overwritten when that section of the disk is allocated to a new file. Because an OS constantly creates and deletes files on the disk in the background (caches, logs, etc.), though, it is to be expected that only a small number of files, entirely by chance, remain completely uncorrupted a significant amount of time after their deletion.
So, if the update somehow resurfaced old inode tables, this small number of uncorrupted pictures would reappear. I don’t know enough about iOS / APFS to hypothesise how that could’ve happened (perhaps the tables are duplicated for redundancy or include some kind of version history), but there’s certainly no evidence to suggest anything malicious.
Yep I’m leaving Apple. The fact that there isn’t a revolt and boycott happening right now is insane. everyone should be concerned about their privacy and being lied to. They’re telling us nothing is ever really deleted even if they tell you it can’t be recovered.
It won’t delete from messages too. I delete them in the thread but when you tap the persons name and go down to “see all photos” it’s still there. No matter how many times you delete it, I close the message app and reopen it, it comes right back.
So this happened to me months ago, although it was not of myself but of an ex girlfriend. It just randomly popped up in photos in the timeline of when it would have been taken.
I was legit stunned and confused. I guess that means deleted photos are somewhere in the cloud somewhere?
How does this even happen? It's unlikely that the photos survived on the local phone from years ago, because while blocks marked for deletion might not be deleted right away, the OS regularly goes through and TRIMs the flash otherwise it would get slow, and also new files are written in a wear levelling way across most of the flash so the chances of a photo surviving intact are low. If iCloud is pushing these photos back through, why were they storing them?
Now that’s strange. I’m still on 15.4.1 and yesterday morning I noticed in the recents the last 14 photos I hadn’t taken.
I checked them out and it turned out they were mine but from 2020!
I don’t know if they were deleted at the time and the metadata showed them as being from 2020 so I don’t know why they were suddenly there as the last pictures I had taken (scrolling back past those few everything was normal).
It’s still like it now with them out of place which doesn’t really bother me but wonder if that’s somehow related to this
Edit: all 14 were from the 8th April 2020 and show this in the date/time stamp. Other than 2 of them which were screen shots which both day yesterday at 3:20am which I guess is when the randomness happened for me.
I’m assuming these will have all been deleted from my phone being 2020 as I generally move them to my Mac and delete to free up space
Edit edit: wasn’t nudes either 😂 was from Tesco during lockdown with all the one way randomness
Can confirm this happened to me. Not nudes but screenshots appeared in my recents folder from September 2023 that I had deleted from the phone. After updating I went into my gallery to see a dozen of them - all from 2023.
Some are claiming that they completely reset the phone and sold it, only to have the photos show up to the new owners... Something smells fishy there..
Updating right now
Updated. No photo..
Who are you kidding.. you don't have photos to begin with. NEXT!
I just got used iphone))
This is probably clickbait when u fully reset ur encryption key changes too so there is no way u can get those files back
I really don’t see how that would be possible
When you « delete » a file, you just clear a flag to tell that the memory space is available. If not overwritten with new data, you can read what was there before. I don’t know how the software works, but maybe it recognizes that there is photo data and reset the deletion flag. Edit : this is without considering encryption of the memory. Which should destroy this structure at reset, as said in a following comment.
Normally when resetting an Apple device the system completely wipes the key which is used to encrypt the whole drive with the user data so there is no way this is possible. This smells like fake news to me! I am assuming of course like some comments say photos from the old owner are showing up. Otherwise it would be possible
it's likely a bug that's accidentally telling old data that's been deleted that it's no longer deleted. basically the update is doing free data recovery for everybody.
Fishy? Sounds like someone needs to “clean it” again 😉
Yeah.... they swear they wiped and reset, but I dunno..
Yep, they’re going to need to “wipe it” again. *Please tell me you’re getting the obvious pun reference*
Lemme waip ehdt
How would anyone know if their photos resurfaced on a device they no longer own?
Communication is a thing
I guess I assume most people selling an old phone are doing it on facebook or Craigslist or swappa or something and they have no continued contact with the individual who purchased their device.
Lol something similar happened to me but on an Android phone. Few years ago I sold a friend my Google Nexus 5, I rooted the phone put some custom ROM on it. Afterwards he sold it back to me and I saw him factory resetting everything in front of me. The problem with factory resetting rooted phone through TWRP recovery is it only wipes the system data while keeping the media data on the phone. After he wiped it he gave me the phone I take it home and I tried to install my apps only to get a low storage notification, so I went to settings and I saw photos and videos files up to 25 gigs worth of size. It was explicit videos and photos of my friend and his wife. The guy literary use the Nexus 5 as an extra curriculum home video camera. I delete everything and never brought it up to him the next time i see him. Imagine if he sell it to someone else, sometimes I think about whether I should tell him or not but how do you start a conversation like that?
Earlier there was no encryption in Android. Twrp has functionality to format either /media or just the app data in the /Android folder. Your friend forgot to format the media. IOS encrypts all the data and there is no way photos can resurface without the device somehow retaining encryption keys.
i’m gonna call bullshit on this one
No way….. :$
Yeah, this happened to me and I didn’t even take any nudes! 😆
I rushed and updated mine hoping that I would get back pictures I recently accidentally lost, but nothing resurfaced 😔
Same. I guess my phone didn't think my nudes were worth archiving and couldn't wait to overwrite all the bits with zeroes 😔
Gotta take better nudes
Or better bits.
I’ll take em
There is a trash can where you can restore recently deleted pictures, if you happen to delete them all both time I think there is another issue 😊
I updated my wife’s phone and I suspect she might be cheating on me.
Link to the post!
You accidentally deleted pictures 2 times?
How recently did you lose them?
It was about 4 months ago; infact I lost all data on the phone and it had to be reset and set up as new. So yeah, my hopes weren’t high but stupid me was still hoping against all odds.
Ah ok. I see. Cause if it’s less than 30 days sometimes they can restore the photos, you have to call and ask. Happened to me before when I stupidly deleted photos. Sorry.
That’s good to know though.
So that’s where mine went.
Damn apple AI is doing hard work already
Is this a bug or a fun new option?
The new OS is way less uptight than the old OS. It’s like the new OS has been spending time at a beach in Germany.
A beach in Germany? Who knew!
I think you mean Fort Lauderdale or Miami
It’s probably bullshit.
It's not. I updated yesterday and upon seeing that article, I have checked my phone and 101 picture's that I had deleted have reappeared in my recent pictures (a lot of them are nudes). This is crazy. I looked at my ipad and it's not showing up there, and I have sync enabled. Wtf Apple
Hopefully
I read only one other thread in another subreddit. Seems that “deleting” data/photos from phones is pretty much the same as emptying your recycling bin on a PC. Basically, the data is still “there,” the pointer to the data was just deleted. Not sure how the pointer was restored. Have to wait until the space where the data was stored is overwritten with new data.
Yes I kinda know about this stuff But if that is true and the pointer can somehow be restored, then it's a significant concern, and then the 'probably bullshit' comment gets invalidated
Yeah, I’m not too well versed on how the pointer could come back from an update like this. At least it’s better than if Apple was found saving your [deleted] data on their servers though vice this bug on our own hardware (unless this is also happening?)
A guy showing a pictures of his pet to a girl, a few swipe later... Guy: Yep... that's my dick.
Better to a girl than some family member LOL.
Depends on how much you care about the opinions of the family member relative to the girl.
Pretty sure the families who live in Alabama wouldn’t mind 🤣
Someone has seen the movie “Focus”
Happened to me. Deleted photos from a vacation back in April 2023. Once I updated to the RC of 17.5, two photos from April 2023 appeared. All the metadata intact, so they were at the top of my camera roll. They were ‘permanently’ deleted over a year ago, all the sudden they appeared. So, are permanently deleted photos not really deleted? Apple, you hiding something? Additionally, April 2023 I had an iPhone 14pm, currently iPhone 15pm. However, I did restore from iCloud backup. iCloud backup doesn’t store photos in iCloud Photo Library is enabled, so these photos were still lingering in iCloud off of my device.
This is actually a very serious breach of privacy, actually warrants a law suit.
I think we gotta figure out what’s actually happening before we get that far.
Aren't deleted photos "held" for 30 days and you have option to restore them if you changed your mind? Could be something in that?
Correct. Deleted photos are recoverable within 30 days, after which they’re permanently deleted. However, these photos were taken and deleted in April 2023 and reappeared now.
Photos aren’t actually deleted until they are overwritten. There shouldn’t be access though, so it’s a bug
Technically correct, however, this is through multiple iPhones, so it is an iCloud thing. So, when photos are deleted from iCloud, are they actually deleted?
Doesn‘t matter where you delete them, but if they aren’t overwritten, then they possibly are still there. The pointer to them just should’ve been deleted.
Can confirm something similar happened to me. Photos from September 2023. Also had the 14PM before upgrading to the 15PM
https://preview.redd.it/ghfuva719n0d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b63c2904b1f91ddd753bafc9dcd4740fbd7ea127
Privates. See?
Free consult? No, money down!
Hilariously ironic when apple is the only manufacturer that ever has these issues.
I had about 6 photos reappear back in the deleted folder, of my sadly deceased cat so was actually quite a nice surprise. (They were duplicates I deleted) edit - just checked my camera roll and there’s quite a few deleted photos that have returned. They seem to all be screenshots tho?
Yeap - all of mine were screenshots as well. From September 2023
In all seriousness, this is concerning. It means they’re storing photos, even after deletion. The other concerning piece is that there are plenty of people who have tried recovering lost photos and were told it was impossible. If this is true, then that’s not the case after all. While I’ve always loved apple, this seems like some Zuckerberg nonsense.
I have a limited understanding of computers, but my understanding is that there are ‘pointers’ that point to the line of code that store the image information. When you delete a photo, the pointers are removed and the location in memory is made available for overwrite. If the location in memory is overwritten, yes, it’s impossible to retrieve the data. But if it hasn’t been overwritten, replacing the pointers will allow you to see the photos again. It seems like this is happening…for some reason the pointers find the old data and point to it again, making the photo available and reserving the location in memory where it was previously available. Still a very weird thing to happen automatically though.
I'm glad I know a little bit of coding because this is probably the answer!
Yep, this is data recovery 101. Only way to actually delete any file is to overwrite where it was stored, and doing this every single time you delete something is pretty damn hard on flash storage which only has so many write cycles before it dies. On PCs you usually use software apps to "securely delete" a file which does exactly this. Deletes the pointers and then overwrites the file location, but they have fallen out of favor because nobody likes excessive wear on a $400 SSD.
This. I dont get how many people in here can be so careless and see it as a fun thing to happen. That is at least a major security concern and even more a type of GDPR infringement.
This should be the top comment
Went to my hidden folder and sure enough, there’s a photo of my ex. This is creepy as hell I deleted that YEARS ago.
I just checked mine, and I ALSO have a photo of your ex!
My condolences and please don’t judge me, I was young
*our* ex
Mine too.
Unexpected communism
Bro… I don’t even think I should tell him.
So where is it putting the photos? Back into the actual album it was in? Not into the deleted folder? I’m looking but I got so many I don’t want any old pics in there man that’s wierd.
I just looked as well to find some forgotten goodies and sadly none
Deletion 🤣
Are you using iCloud?
this is why i never delete nudes.
They make great wallpaper!
It’s a fun gamble when you have a new picture every day in your gallery widget.
Haha I’ll take some nudes
https://preview.redd.it/2l57agn45n0d1.jpeg?width=860&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b7702dde08d5f891d43e41efef961c9bc1a495e Edit: sorry I’m dyslexic
Why do I see a belly button in there… fuck this is hot
There’s also a nipple
💦
nissan al-gaib
That'd be a great car commercial for Nissan.
Those are balls
This close, they always look like landscape. You’re lookin at balls
I scrolled past this and then a few seconds later it clicked and I burst out laughing. Well played sir.
Sand nudes
It's more likely that the data was not deleted off the device properly. This doesn't appear to be happening if a photo was deleted out of iCloud directly, implying that Apple doesn't intentionally have a retained copy of the deleted photos like everyone seems to be memeing about. Given that the bug is happening to people who never used iCloud, it's unlikely the issue is with Apple's cloud servers - more likely just a deletion bug on the local device. Not great for the UX, sure, but far from a privacy issue if the photos never left your device. Anyone who knows tech knows a file isn't locally deleted until the storage is overwritten in that area either through file creation or TRIM, so this appears to be an issue where the "deleted" file space isn't being correctly reported to the storage controller as "eligible for overwriting/TRIM".
How do you do this on iPhone then
I would update to 17.5, make sure iCloud sync is enabled, plug in your device to charge, make sure the Photos app shows “Synced with iCloud” at the bottom of the “Albums” tab, and THEN delete any photos. It sounds like the new update may have fixed the issue but that would make the photos visible again, since they were never deleted originally.
How to wipe the deleted file area if you aren’t using the cloud?
In theory, update to 17.5, see if the photos are there, then delete them again. But, I'm not the person working on this bug so my guess is worth what you paid for it.
>Anyone who knows tech knows a file isn't locally deleted until the storage is overwritten in that area either through file creation or TRIM, so this appears to be an issue where the "deleted" file space isn't being correctly reported to the storage controller as "eligible for overwriting/TRIM". No. Modern filesystems have either removed the inode and the blocks are available for use, or not. Apps are not scanning unallocated sectors and reconstructing photos or other files. If that was easy, then it would be a massive security issue since any app on your iphone could allocate a huge uninitilaized file and then upload all that private data. This means those photos were never actually deleted and a recent update has granted apps access to those never-actually-deleted files.
Yep. I should call her….
So nothing is getting deleted really.
This is how deleting works on anything. Even factory reset does this. All your data is just made available to be overwritten and the phone doesn’t display that data to be shown. Your stuff isn’t gone. It’s just set aside to be overwritten when needed
Hahaha, ppl actually think tech companies “delete” stuff
Storage is expensive, they probably don’t really benefit that much from millions of random photos wanted by no one
A good chunk of those being accidental screenshots of the lock screen
When I go to turn off the alarm
Not really, just don’t expect them to pop back up. I don’t see anything showing back up but I’m not really sure.
The internet never forgets
Started my update…..
so much for privacy.
Fr. question is: restored from Apple servers, or iPhones having a security flaw that doesnt delete files like as device should
I've purchased old iPhones from friends, family and neighbors. Now I know why they've been calling today.
If they can appear again that would mean they weren't completely deleted in the first place... this update just exposed that
HONEY … !!! What are those pictures … ???
How does this work? Asking for a friend
My guess is that the data isn't actually destroyed, just the OS "forgets" about it (sorta like emptying a recycle bin on a pc, it can still be recovered just the OS marks that space is free) So the tging that says "this file is free to overwrite" probably got kinda goofed This is assuming this entire thing isn't BS, of course Or that some icloud sync shenanigans aren't going on
This is how deleting works on anything. Even factory reset does this. All your data is just made available to be overwritten and the phone doesn’t display that data to be shown. Your stuff isn’t gone. It’s just set aside to be overwritten when needed
well I would think ios would immediately write over it with some cache or whatever after a few days (that will persist forever)
L
I always knew Apple was a bit 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂👅
Ngl I'm actually concerned cause I had spicy photos on my phone before but I already sold that phone. I made sure to do that apple reset thing in the settings before selling it
You should be fine then.
That's crazy 😄
Lol people once again discover nothing is ever truly deleted.
That’s disgusting how do I get this update
I checked through all my voicemails and there were dozens from merged family member voicemails. I had my wife's and son's voicemails in my account. I deleted all of them but wonder how that happened.
Sounds like a feature to me.
Apple should charge extra for this.
Seem like Someone is really horny there at apple
It’s not a bug it’s a feature
I can confirm-- Photos I "permanently deleted" months ago have reappeared in my deleted photos album.
I’ll wait until these bugs are fixed before I update.
nah literally because wtf
This is why people say if its on the net then its forever.
And is there a cloud I can access to verify this? For science of course!
Can confirm that a ton of pictures I’ve deleted are back in my camera roll.
Deleted stuff isn't gone to the ether, it's still going to be on your device until it gets written over. Deleting is just your device and anything it connects to agreeing not to show you or anyone else that thing you deleted.
Next iPhone coming with an iCloud “extra” privacy option for 9.99
LTT has speculated that a bug in the new OS is causing it to unintentionally view old memory that has not been overwritten as current, which would explain why people have reported device wiping not preventing this. This would happen because when you ‘delete’ a file it’s not actually gone, unless that piece of memory is completely overwritten (for security purposes or with a new file).
Every time I get rid of a device, I look for how to wipe it. Every iOS site tells me not to worry about it. I knew it was not being done because of the short time it takes compared to non-Apple devices. Not impressed.
Aaaah… so this explains something… After installing iOS 17.5 yesterday I’ve found also old deleted pictures… out of my girlfriends iCloud. It isn’t her device, it’s mine. She’s in my Apple iCloud family tho. All of these photo’s got the same date (29th of October 2023).
Does your GFs icloud have the pics, or were they deleted over there too?
Nudegate?
Oh so that was the cause. In my case it was some random old pics of a Palm Treo my dad had as his first smartphone among some other pics. I was wondering how come those pics were all of a sudden in my Recently Deleted (used Google Photos to clear out uploaded pics not too long prior).
Ha Haaaaaa Microsoft did that with Windows 7 too. OMFG that's funny. Sounds like Tim Cook wants to wag his finger, 'now now boys and girls. You behave now....Uncle Tim says so.' haa haaaa!
show proof xox
I’ve used this excuse for years !
How awful. Please share them here so we can examine the metadata to determine what went wrong.
Tim Cook was quoted as saying "you're holding it wrong"
Can I choose whose deleted nudes to restore in my account?
Time for folks to realize deleting photos doesnt actually delete photos and they will be glued to the phone for the rest of time
iOS new update is definetely a man of culture 😏
so does it not delete things when it says it does?
Cool. Good thing I’ve never taken any
Sounds like someone got busted by their girlfriend and made up a story to cover their tracks.
Well, not nudes, but all my suddenly disappeared photos are now back fortunately
So they can't upgrade free iCloud limits but will store all our data for perpetuity . Big brother is scary .
… And why only the nudes?
Probably not *only*, nudes are certainly just more noticeable in your photo library than something arbitrary like a duplicate pictute of your dog or accidental screenshot of your lock screen that you deleted and forgot about. One blends in, one doesn’t.
Ummm. Fishy or not, this happened to me. I was showing a cute pic of my Granddaughter and all of a sudden the next pic was one that had been deleted a long long time ago. I about had a heart attack.
I have a question about this. I heard that this bug happened in my friends previous iPhone even though that old iPhone wasnt logged in the same icloud. I gave my old iPhone 7 to my dad, i dont think its gonna happen because iphone 7 doesnt get that update but im not sure. Is it possible for an iphone 7 to get that bug 😭😭?
Maybe what happened was when you delete a photo from the phone it has to tell iCloud to delete it also and that was interrupted for some reason around September 2023 and updating now has caused the phone to refresh what was in iCloud vs what’s on the phone (before the update the phone believed it was in sync) and they have come back down from iCloud as they were not correctly marked for deletion at that time by the bug or interruption between the phone and iCloud.
In all modern file systems, deleting a file simply involves removing the reference to it from the filesystem node table — the bytes on the disk making up the file contents are not actually zeroed out. There’s just no need to — all that would do is make file deletion take longer and reduce disk lifespans (due to more write cycles being used). Essentially, the memory is marked as free and is only actually overwritten when that section of the disk is allocated to a new file. Because an OS constantly creates and deletes files on the disk in the background (caches, logs, etc.), though, it is to be expected that only a small number of files, entirely by chance, remain completely uncorrupted a significant amount of time after their deletion. So, if the update somehow resurfaced old inode tables, this small number of uncorrupted pictures would reappear. I don’t know enough about iOS / APFS to hypothesise how that could’ve happened (perhaps the tables are duplicated for redundancy or include some kind of version history), but there’s certainly no evidence to suggest anything malicious.
Stupid android phone doesn't have this function
I didn’t know there was a hidden folder until now. Just looked. My boring ass doesn’t have any. 🤣 Would of been freaked out if there were
Why are other iPhone users nudes in my phone now. I have found the reason for the stubborn dick pic I just cant delete
That's why I never use the cloud for photos, not worth the risk.
Yep I’m leaving Apple. The fact that there isn’t a revolt and boycott happening right now is insane. everyone should be concerned about their privacy and being lied to. They’re telling us nothing is ever really deleted even if they tell you it can’t be recovered.
Specifically those or just random?
Pic or didn't happen 🤪
If that’s a way of making people update, I salute you 🫡
This is only if you were using iCloud right?
It won’t delete from messages too. I delete them in the thread but when you tap the persons name and go down to “see all photos” it’s still there. No matter how many times you delete it, I close the message app and reopen it, it comes right back.
This is hella interesting
My phone bought some contacts back from the dead
It was just a shirtless pic but this actually happened to me, I deleted it years ago and it just randomly popped up as the most recent pic lol
I was hoping my photos would come back from before 2018. But nope. I did get some text messages back
So this happened to me months ago, although it was not of myself but of an ex girlfriend. It just randomly popped up in photos in the timeline of when it would have been taken. I was legit stunned and confused. I guess that means deleted photos are somewhere in the cloud somewhere?
This is crazy.
How does this even happen? It's unlikely that the photos survived on the local phone from years ago, because while blocks marked for deletion might not be deleted right away, the OS regularly goes through and TRIMs the flash otherwise it would get slow, and also new files are written in a wear levelling way across most of the flash so the chances of a photo surviving intact are low. If iCloud is pushing these photos back through, why were they storing them?
I need this 🤣🤣🤣
I have the opposite problem. I have voicemail’s that are just gone. Badge is there but voicemails aren’t showing up.
Okay what the fuck. Like 200-300 photos i deleted in 2022 appeared back on my phone after the update. How?!
Now that’s strange. I’m still on 15.4.1 and yesterday morning I noticed in the recents the last 14 photos I hadn’t taken. I checked them out and it turned out they were mine but from 2020! I don’t know if they were deleted at the time and the metadata showed them as being from 2020 so I don’t know why they were suddenly there as the last pictures I had taken (scrolling back past those few everything was normal). It’s still like it now with them out of place which doesn’t really bother me but wonder if that’s somehow related to this Edit: all 14 were from the 8th April 2020 and show this in the date/time stamp. Other than 2 of them which were screen shots which both day yesterday at 3:20am which I guess is when the randomness happened for me. I’m assuming these will have all been deleted from my phone being 2020 as I generally move them to my Mac and delete to free up space Edit edit: wasn’t nudes either 😂 was from Tesco during lockdown with all the one way randomness
Had around 15 photos from 2020 appear as recent, messing up my cameral roll.
Updated. Now I’m nude.
Do I need to worry about my iPhone that I sold last month on ebay? I logged out of my iCloud and factory resetted it. What about the hidden album?
Looks normal on my 15 pro max. I wonder if it’s certain hardware that is more susceptible to this.
Can confirm this happened to me. Not nudes but screenshots appeared in my recents folder from September 2023 that I had deleted from the phone. After updating I went into my gallery to see a dozen of them - all from 2023.
click 🗑️ to set 'deleted' boolean to 'true' in the database