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IOS Bug Apple

Troubling iOS 17.5 Bug Reportedly Resurfacing Old Deleted Photos (macrumors.com) 58

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: There are concerning reports on Reddit that Apple's latest iOS 17.5 update has introduced a bug that causes old photos that were deleted -- in some cases years ago -- to reappear in users' photo libraries. After updating their iPhone, one user said they were shocked to find old NSFW photos that they deleted in 2021 suddenly showing up in photos marked as recently uploaded to iCloud. Other users have also chimed in with similar stories. "Same here," said one Redditor. "I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly." "Same thing happened to me," replied another user. "Six photos from different times, all I have deleted. Some I had deleted in 2023." More reports have been trickling in overnight. One said: "I had a random photo from a concert taken on my Canon camera reappear in my phone library, and it showed up as if it was added today."
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Troubling iOS 17.5 Bug Reportedly Resurfacing Old Deleted Photos More

Troubling iOS 17.5 Bug Reportedly Resurfacing Old Deleted Photos

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  • Hey mom (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anachronous Coward ( 6177134 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @02:24PM (#64474965)

    Let me show you some new pictures of the kids.

    Whoops -- well, that's when we were MAKING them.

    • Let me show you some new pictures of the kids.

      Whoops -- well, that's when we were MAKING them.

      Ahhh... all those Louisiana gals suddenly finding those naughty Mardi Gras pics showing up in iCloud again.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ls671 ( 1122017 )

      Yeah, my new girlfriend didn't believe me when she saw the pictures on my phone of me and my former girlfriend making kids as "recent" photos. I am thinking about suing Apple. What are my chances? Anyway, now at least I showed her TFA so maybe I can get some sex again, hopefully...

  • iCloud remembers ...

    • Yep. I found this exact same thing happening. And like...... uh apple, I deleted these? Why do you still have these shit old photos. Granted, some are photos I was actually pleased to find again from older phones, but still. Its a worry.

  • EU collecting money AGAIN soon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by franzrogar ( 3986783 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @02:30PM (#64474991)

    If they were PREVIOUSLY deleted...

    How come they POP-UP AGAIN if they were ERASED?

    Where were they hosted? Who could access (supposedly) DELETED photos?

    • Only apple knows, and they aint telling.

    • If they were PREVIOUSLY deleted...

      How come they POP-UP AGAIN if they were ERASED?

      Where were they hosted? Who could access (supposedly) DELETED photos?

      HINT: iCloud is forever. Which is why I never turned on auto-sync for my phone. I'll pick the pictures I want to upload, thanks.

    • It does make you wonder if it's an iOS 17.5 bug or if a very old bug finally got fixed and this is the result. And the files were on the device all along.

    • I wonder if there is any chance these were on the local device and not iCloud. People do keep devices for multiple years, so it seem possible- if unlikely.

      In any case, it seems these photos were not actually deleted, which is a problem.
    • The tree letter agencies were done with them and just put them back.

  • Holy Shit (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

    Does this mean Apple was keeping copies of photos you (thought you) deleted?

    Are these provided to law enforcement by subpoena?

    Did a subtle whistleblower introduce a subtle bug?

    Wild possibilities to consider.

    Cloud-mandatory devices are hard to even contemplate. Convenience, I guess.

  • Deleted? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @02:40PM (#64475031)

    You keep using that word. I don't think you know what it means.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Could be a serious GDPR issue. We need a bit more detail, but retaining intimate photos of a user after they have asked you to delete it, and worse still you told them it was deleted, is a pretty serious issue.

      • Nobody cares about the GDPR, and what would you do about it at this point, anyway.

        If you or anyone else posted pictures to "the cloud" and thought that was ever going to be deleted, you are at least as culpable as Apple.

  • Oops (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dawn Keyhotie ( 3145 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @02:45PM (#64475051)

    "There is no privacy. Get over it." - Scott McNealy

    Nothing in the cloud is ever deleted. Ever. Once it's in "the cloud", you have lost control of it forever.

    You can expect the most embarrassing "deleted" photos to show up at the most awkward times. Count in it.

  • i"Cloud" (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @02:50PM (#64475063) Homepage
    Well, "there" is your problem. The cloud is not yours, and they don't actually delete the content you willingly gave them. In the age of data collection and data brokers, who knew?

  • "Hey, who's that lady you're with there?"

  • Once it goes in the database, it doesn't come back out, it just gets flagged "deleted".

    • Just like on the old spinning platters.

      You would think the servers would be cleaning up deleted files and consolidating disk space to make room for fresh data, but apparently not.

      Did they anticipate the need for huge amounts of 'abandoned' data to train the AI?

      How does a GPU pour bleach in its 'eyes' any way? ;-)

      Cloud, evil, avoid at all costs. Get it? Got it. Good.

      • Nah. It's got nothing to do with conspiracy bullshit. Disk space is cheaper than developers. Soft-deletes produce less bugs, and less serious bugs when they manifest.

        It's just laziness, I promise.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        If they're using a B+Tree or a B*Tree, deletion is a lot more expensive than making as deleted, and not removing it until something else wants to be stored at the same index. But they *should* zero out the data.

  • People hand themselves over to Apple in toto. People hand themselves over to some "cloud" or other, in toto.

    Why?

    Why would any presumably sane person ever do such a thing?

    It's already plenty more than bad enough to give away such little as I'm giving away here and now with this comment.

    But to hand it all over?

    How can people possibly bring themselves to believe things like this could ever end well for them?

    I cannot fathom the least of it. It is beyond senseless. It is beyond imagining.

    And yet

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Gleenie ( 412916 )

      Arguably less than they hand themselves over to Google, but your basic point is still true.

  • Would be worse if you couldn't delete someone else's pictures.

  • Is this a sync-related issue or is it that even after you deleted the file from all your devices AND iCloud, Apple still retrieved the photo from its photo archives? This means Apple is not deleting your stuff and either keeping it in the database with a deleted flag or has it in some bakcup somewhere. That would be fucked up, and there should be laws making that illegal.

    • I would guess it is a bug in local sync without other information. I know as an example that old photos that I have deleted may still exist in Photos backups when upgrades are done. To really delete anything you need a formal retention policy, even for home.

    • yeah these are user reports from the internet with little to no further verification.

      i would not be at all surprised if, a few weeks after they deleted their amateur sex tape, they recovered from a backup (or upgraded their phone using the latest backup instead of a new image), and the images had been sitting there for years anyway.

      i would not be surprised if it were something nefarious either, but "three user stories gathered from the internet" is not exactly uh journalism.

  • These leaks are important. Otherwise how would I know that a 10 in on-screen attractiveness has an average body when nude? If it's not Emily Ratajkowski, you'll probably be vaguely disappointed. Not that I have any problem with "average". I'm a 3, tops. And I don't know any guy that gets a girl out of her underwear, finds a 5, and says, "No thank you!"

    What were we talking about? Oh yeah... cloud files resurfacing... well, part of me suspects it's related to files not being deleted "everywhere". I've got an

    • well, part of me suspects it's related to files not being deleted "everywhere". I've got an Mac mini, a few iOS devices, and I have iCloud folders on my PCs as well. It's like playing whack-a-mole. I can totally see something "putting back" files that were synced outward at some point.

      This was my thought as well. Managing synch - especially with photos - between devices is one glaring area where Apple's "just works" reputation is sorely overestimated. I constantly think I have photo sharing turned off acr

  • This is exactly why I don't store ANYTHING in the cloud. I only use phones with SDCard slots for storage. I backup to my NAS at home which isn't connected to the internet whatsoever and on private subnets.

    Just remember - 'There is no such thing as the cloud, just other peoples computers."

  • The bug is bad, but fixable.

    What is more worrying is the fact that Apple appears to have fired their QA team.

  • Literally nowhere in the documentation is there a claim that pushing the garbage bin will permanently remove the files from your system.
    Just look it up.
    All your NSFW pictures will be available to Apple for all eternity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      In sane legal jurisdictions that doesn't matter. It's reasonable to expect that deleted images, especially when accompanied by warnings that that they cannot be recovered, are really gone. Consumers should not have to assume everything is a lie, or hire a lawyer to determine that the EULA redefines words to have a new and different meaning.

  • And this is why I have trust issues with anything "tech", especially when made and sold by a for profit corporation...

  • It looks like these files were never really deleted, and Apple has them hanging around some where. This issue proves that is happening!
  • I find this scary if true. Why is Apple storing your information? If they are storing deleted photos then they are storing everything else that comes on your phone, including text messages, phone logs, voice mails, and I wouldn't be surprised Facetime calls.

  • First people were mad that they sat on their phones and they *didn't* break.

    Now they're mad that cloud storage *didn't* lose their files.

  • ... that was the term back then. Nothing is really deleted, just flagged `omit in search results and listings'.

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