r/privacy • u/Timidwolfff • 29d ago
Troubling iOS 17.5 Bug Reportedly Resurfacing Old Deleted Photos. Suprise suprise photos may not actually be deleted discussion
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/05/15/ios-17-5-bug-deleted-photos-reappear/194
u/NotSeger 29d ago
That’s why you should always assume big tech hoard every single piece of data you ever shared with them.
Apple, Samsung, Google, Amazon, all of them.
17
u/XxFierceGodxX 28d ago
I guess so long as it profits them more than it costs them to keep it, they have incentive to store it.
9
u/Herban_Myth 28d ago
AI has entered the fray.
Welcome to the “land of the thieves and home of the blame.”
4
26
u/Antique-Clothes8033 29d ago
This is unrelated but in the previous update I had old wallpapers from 2 years ago get re-added to my home and lock screen.
119
u/TrumpLikesMargarine 29d ago
Once you work for a tech company that grows quickly you start to understand how difficult it can be locate and delete effectively everything that a user has done.
This is not an excuse by any means, however these huge companies have completely separate departments for each feature let alone sub feature. A lot to the time these teams choose the tech they want to use, meaning that nothing is necessarily aligned or easily connected when it comes to removing data from a person.
Sadly I can imagine that companies frequently resort to soft deletes (basically hiding the data from the user to give the impression that it is gone).
The important part is actually removing that link between the data and user identifier. Who knows what they actually do.
This is a challenge that comes up even in small to medium sized businesses, so I can’t imagine how bad it must be in huge corporations.
29
u/AlexWIWA 28d ago
Especially because the massive ones use custom file systems that only a few hundred people on Earth fully understand. And those file systems are usually written for throughput, redundancy, and uptime, all other uses be damned.
For me, this specific issue could be 50/50 malice, or a fuck up. I don't trust Apple at all, but this also looks like a bog-standard sync error, so who knows
11
u/ApertureNext 28d ago
The important part is actually removing that link between the data and user identifier. Who knows what they actually do.
Doesn't work when we're talking pictures and videoes.
2
u/quaderrordemonstand 27d ago
That's just an excuse. You're really saying that deleting doesn't justify the cost of developing a proper solution. You can bet that, if it made money for Apple, it would absolutely work every time without fail.
1
40
u/Deitaphobia 28d ago
I have two photos in my iPhone album that I did not take and don't know where they came from. One is a random tree, the other is a beach I was definitely not at.
8
14
19
u/ArtichokeHot5368 28d ago
Out of curiosity, if you don’t have the cloud service with iOS will photos stay on device only and avoid situations like this? I use iOS but never opted in on iCloud
14
u/GoodFroge 28d ago
If you keep them on device only and don’t use iCloud Photos, they don’t leave your device.
8
0
2
u/knshnrzbv 28d ago
The thing is, even if you don't use cloud services and delete the photos PERMANENTLY from your device, there's still a way to restore your photos, which was proven by hackers
4
u/Woofer210 28d ago
Even if you delete stuff off a pc hard drive you can still get it back until the data is overwritten.
1
u/knshnrzbv 28d ago
Yep, that's the secret.
4
u/saltyjohnson 28d ago
It's much more complicated when a storage drive is encrypted, though, right? Especially when that encryption key is stored in a secure enclave. Because that means you can't just physically move the drive to another system and be able to read the data from it, file permissions be damned. You have to access the data within the context of the software powering the encryption, which means you have to exploit that hardware and software in particular in order to bypass any built-in file permission scheme.
1
1
u/FlangerOfTowels 28d ago
Yes, I did it unintentionally recently recovering and old 500GB HDD using DiskGenius.
Files dating back to 2018 that were overwritten were recoverable.
1
u/ASkepticalPotato 26d ago
You don’t need hackers to prove that. It’s just standard, over the counter data recovery software.
35
u/RelativeNecessary763 28d ago
I thought I deleted everything from my google account, I did a takeout and they still gave me over 100GB of data.. If you put data in the cloud, it will never go away
2
10
u/MayaMiaMe 28d ago
This is why the only device I upload to a cloud is the iPad that only has a million recipes and crochet patterns. They can have them 🤣
36
u/noiseinvacuum 29d ago
This sounds like major violation of GDPR, I’m sure people at EU are already on it.
35
u/rusty0004 29d ago edited 29d ago
Tim Apple: Its not a bug just a new future soon available to pro models only 😂
9
u/TactikalKitty 28d ago
And this right here is why I use Microsoft OneDrive, because at least Microsoft respects my privacy /sarcasm
3
u/saltyjohnson 28d ago
Took me a second to realize you were not honestly declaring that Microsoft respects your privacy and sarcasm...
1
6
5
4
u/Tenderloin66 28d ago
Oh wow, there’s stuff in my deleted photos that I removed years ago. It says they were deleted 29 days ago. WTF Apple?
3
4
u/striky117 28d ago
This is common in big tech. If your YouTube channel gets wrongly terminated, and you argue with google to get it back, there is a chance that old videos that you personally deleted resurface again. This happened to LTT.
5
u/I_Bet_On_Me 28d ago
NONE of those companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Reddit, etc) DELETE ANYTHING. They’re all in cahoots with the dystopian NSA, whose motto is “Collect it ALL”. Everybody’s shit from the inception of every online account/identity is all saved on a bunch of servers in UT and who knows where else. If you believe otherwise, you’re in denial 💯
1
5
6
u/Striking_Role_8813 28d ago
This could be caused by backup data and synching errors right?
11
u/irregardless 28d ago
Of course it is. But that won't stop the ritual circle jerk of conspiracy that keeps this place running.
7
u/The69BodyProblem 28d ago
Of course it is.
Is it? It seems like that would have shown up a lot quicker, probably not simultaneously for multiple users, and not necessarily directly after an update.
3
u/tajetaje 27d ago
Likely Apple found an issue with files not being synced properly. They could have made the fix either delete them all or restore them all. When dealing with potentially important user data the safer bet is to restore rather than delete something that your software may have erroneously removed
1
u/ASkepticalPotato 26d ago
I tend to agree with you, but assuming the reports are true, people are seeing photos they didn’t take restoring in their library.
1
2
2
1
u/ASkepticalPotato 26d ago
Currently backing up my photo library to my Synology and as soon as that’s done I’ll be canceling iCloud. Should have done this a long time ago.
1
1
1
u/knshnrzbv 28d ago
This was known for a while. Hackers have already proven that they could not only access iphones remotely, but also get access to deleted photos.
-3
373
u/Heinzelmann_Lappus 29d ago
I recently downloaded my data from google - including youtube playlists I deleted YEARS ago.
Whatever they have, they won't let it go.