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Apple Releases iOS 17.5.1 With Fix for Reappearing Photos Bug
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iPhone owners say the latest iOS update is resurfacing deleted nudes
It’s probably nothing sinister, though.
www.theverge.com
Probably a lot of that happens with local storage rather then its overwritten.
Yes, I expect Tim Cook to individually set up a Facetime chat with each affected user.
No, I'm talking about some system message of course. Which could easily be handled individually on each device.
Something like "The system has found files that were not properly delete, what do you want to do with them?"
"Delete all", "Recover all", "Review all"
Something like that.
I'm confused ... I thought there were reports that this "bug" caused photos to reappear on devices that had been sold or given away? If this is the case, then how can this bug be related to a database corruption. That would imply some device-specific database that contains your personal data, that remains after a complete wipe.
Which is bad.
Which is bad.
I like this line of thinking, and I can't help but feel this should be one of those rare times Apple actually comes out and makes a statement. Most people will assume the worst.
To be fair, that was just one isolated report. I haven't seen anyone else make that specific claim, while many people have claimed to see it on their own devices.
Apple needs to be more forthcoming with real information here. They seem reluctant to ever admit to being less than perfect.
Quick edit: OK I see the post above this one. Maybe it's related to lack of TRIM on SSDs or something along those lines. Still, Apple needs to make a statement since they now have released a patch and admitted that there is an issue.
For those saying Apple kept your photos deliberately, there’s no evidence of that. If evidence does appear, then Apple should be sued to no end (they should be sued anyway for incompetence), but as a programmer, there are all sorts of possible reasons why this could have occurred. One thing to note is that deleted files of any kind are rarely erased. The OS has a set of pointers to storage blocks (known as file handles in programmer jargon) where these files exist in a database, keeping track of allocated files. Files can be contiguous on storage or may be fragmented, in which case the OS maintains all the blocks taken up by that file. Deleting is typically done by removing those pointers. It is rare that the OS securely overwrites that freed space because writes are generally unnecessary and time consuming. An OS generally just releases the pointers to that file, now considered freed space, and is allowed to overwrite that space with other files.
Once the data is overwritten, then those files are lost, though experts could actually reverse that and retrieve the lost files. This is why secure delete apps exist. What they do is they find these deleted files and repeatedly overwrite them with 1’s and 0’s to ensure they’re gone. It isn’t done just once, since there are experts who can recover overwritten files. A deleted file isn’t always gone forever.
The fact that not all deleted photos reappear tells me that Apple was not deliberately holding onto deleted files. If they were, most likely all deleted files would reappear. It was the case of the OS mistakenly recovering deleted files that weren’t overwritten.
Ever wonder how a file recovery utility works? It goes through storage looking for these orphaned, deleted files that haven’t been overwritten and re-establishes pointers to those missing files. Something about 17.5 likely did something to accidentally recover those deleted files, probably during re-indexing that happens anytime a new OS patch is installed. I’m curious if any partially overwritten files were recovered.
Expect a class action lawsuit of some kind. This is one of those that deserves to happen unlike some frivolous cases like the throttling of the OS due to old, degraded batteries. Whether it’s due to maliciousness or pure incompetence, we don’t know. But Hanlon’s Razor says it’s probably incompetence. Either way, this is bad for them.
Once the data is overwritten, then those files are lost, though experts could actually reverse that and retrieve the lost files. This is why secure delete apps exist. What they do is they find these deleted files and repeatedly overwrite them with 1’s and 0’s to ensure they’re gone. It isn’t done just once, since there are experts who can recover overwritten files. A deleted file isn’t always gone forever.
The fact that not all deleted photos reappear tells me that Apple was not deliberately holding onto deleted files. If they were, most likely all deleted files would reappear. It was the case of the OS mistakenly recovering deleted files that weren’t overwritten.
Ever wonder how a file recovery utility works? It goes through storage looking for these orphaned, deleted files that haven’t been overwritten and re-establishes pointers to those missing files. Something about 17.5 likely did something to accidentally recover those deleted files, probably during re-indexing that happens anytime a new OS patch is installed. I’m curious if any partially overwritten files were recovered.
Expect a class action lawsuit of some kind. This is one of those that deserves to happen unlike some frivolous cases like the throttling of the OS due to old, degraded batteries. Whether it’s due to maliciousness or pure incompetence, we don’t know. But Hanlon’s Razor says it’s probably incompetence. Either way, this is bad for them.
Why is "move to Android" the default silly response to concerns about Apple? I'm going to keep using Apple because they have the tools I use to make an income. I've been using Apple products for a long time. The alternatives also have issues. If something nefarious is actually going on, it's okay for people to voice their concerns over it. Although this may, in fact, be a complete non-issue, my problem is mostly with members in here completely disregarding other people's concerns and acting as though Apple can do no wrong, and doing it in a completely condescending manner. Apple has a long history of doing very wrong things.
Now you're bringing politics into it for some reason, which is the ultimate low-hanging fruit that I couldn't care less about.
But I will agree with you that everything is just conjecture at this point. Apple's update description is quite vague, and a broader explanation would be much appreciated, but I highly doubt they'll give one considering they've been completely silent about the months long Apple ID sign out bug that affected many people (including everyone in my household, and twice myself).
That Reddit user is dumb and everyone thinks they are dumb because what they claimed happened is impossible.
This is mostly only relevant to hard disk drives and not the solid state drives that iPhones, iPads, and modern Macs use.
Not possible and never happened, but I see we're going to keep repeating it anyway.
Fair point ... the other anomoly was that people reported that devices they no longer owned had "suddenly" started re-appearing in their icloud or "find my".
Certainly something more than a local OS patch issue.
Likely, whatever fix they made probably prevented re-indexing from recovering deleted files, but you would still have to delete what was recovered again. It’s unlikely Apple can tell a recovered file from a file that was never deleted since they look the same to the OS.
This reminded me, it wasn't that long ago and possibly more than once that Google Photos was showing people photos from other peoples' accounts. They definitely all have problems.
If anything the most worrying thing about this particular case is that it seems "Erase All Content and Settings" may not do a very secure erase. Maybe it does after this patch. Maybe not.
Bold statement.
A few weeks ago photos that were deleted and randomly returned was "not possible"
That was a pretty severe incident, but it's Google. Nothing is surprising with them.
Not remotely. Not when you have a modicum of understanding of how software works.
"Erase All Content and Settings" drops the encryption key for the user data partition. It's impossible to recover data once that happens. The one person reporting this on Reddit either a) didn't wipe the device even though they claimed they did or b) is a compulsive liar looking for attention. They've since deleted the post, so I lean towards "b."
I tend to agree, but there's someone in this very thread that claims to have found someone else's picture on a used iPad.
I know that's how it's supposed to work, but there may be some sort of bug.
Apple needs to actually tell us what's going on, for once. These are just random people on the internet, we don’t have enough information.
Is that the case though? I seem to have read in one cases photos appeared on other users accounts when they used e.g. a second hand device. Surely people fully erase their phones before selling them?
The same thing happens to me all the time with messages. I'll erase them from my iPhone, Apple will present me with a statement saying it will be erased from all my devices. I erase it and it's gone. Then I start up an old iPad I haven't used in a long time and voila! I get three years of messages downloaded (messages that were supposed to be permanently erased).
If we can’t trust a random dude on the Internet, where are we going, then?
So he was not lying because Apple fixed a bug?
So he was not lying because Apple fixed a bug?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to shut your idea down here, it just doesn't make sense with how encryption works. It's entirely all or nothing. If it doesn't have the key, nothing can be read. There couldn't just be one picture left, it would be all or nothing. If they wiped it correctly (i.e. actually using the "Erase All Content and Settings" feature), it's not possible. So there could be something else going on here. Questions I'd have:
1. Did they actually wipe the device?
2. Did they simply shut it off after they wiped it, or did they go through the first time setup and then shut it off?
3. If the latter to 2, did somebody take a test photo with the device and leave it there?
4. One would hope someone wouldn't be silly enough to do this, but given the latter answer to 2, did they then log back into iCloud for some reason? Even if you log back out, if you just immediately shut the device off, it may not have had time to delete everything that just got synced by logging in. All of this is why I just shut the device off after the wipe brings me back to the welcome screen. If you really want to be sure of something, like, say, activation lock isn't enabled, do the first time setup to make sure it doesn't prompt for your creds, and then just wipe it again.
Stuff like that could easily explain it. I highly doubt anyone is seeing pre-wipe photos on a device. If they are, 99.9999% they're simply mistaken about having actually wiped it.
