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Apple Sheds More Light on iOS 17.5 Bug That Resurfaced Deleted Photos

cjsuk said:
The orphaned images are referenced from both Files and Photos app apparently which is the problem. You can't rationally delete something from one without breaking the other and neither Files or Photos can command the deletion of either authoritatively so the file just stays there.
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Basically, the explanation makes sense. What I don't fully get yet is that there are reports of photos having been deleted before there the Files app got introduced. But then again, those are only reports of cause, and might be wrong.

The other thing is that this fix apparently also got released for tvOS. Which has no Files app.

ApplesAreSweet&Sour said:
"... a corrupted database entry on affected devices was the cause of deleted photos reappearing. In other words, the deleted images that were restored resided locally and never left those devices."

Can someone explain to me, in layman's terms, what a "database entry" is, and what "corrupted" refers to in this context.
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You could imagine it a bit like wanting to throw away physical photos into a bin and by accident some of those photos actually fall behind your cupboard. So the photos would still be there behind the cupboard, but you wouldn't be aware of them, because you thought you threw them away. Only when you rearrange the cupboard for example, you would actually (re-)discover those photos.

You thinking the photos are gone is the "database entry". The photos actually being behind the cupboard is the "corruption".
 
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ApplesAreSweet&Sour said:
"... a corrupted database entry on affected devices was the cause of deleted photos reappearing. In other words, the deleted images that were restored resided locally and never left those devices."

Can someone explain to me, in layman's terms, what a "database entry" is, and what "corrupted" refers to in this context.

And, more importantly, can a "corrupted database entry" really result in files failing to delete and "hiding" on the storage medium.

Does this also mean that these pseudo-deleted photos were taking up storage space, locally, on-device?

To be clear, I'm not saying I doubt Apple's explanation. I'm not an iOS dev.

But couldn't we confirm or deny these claims by going through database entries on any pre iOS 17.5 iPhones? Wouldn't this also reveal why the photos weren't deleted?
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When you delete photos they are not actually deleted. They are still there, just the reference or the file header is deleted/ disassociated. The data that is actually the photo is still there. But because the company cannot see the data it thinks that it is free space, so no it does not take up your storage. There are tools that can be used to recover deleted files/ photos. The only way to actually delete a photo permanently from a computer is to overwrite the data with something else.
When talking about data that is stored in the cloud on some companies servers, you do not have that control, but then the way the data is managed is very different and I would not be too worried about when you set something to delete. Likely that the data is overwritten after 30 days with something else, as they will be operating at the limits of storage all the time to manage costs.
 
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Thank God! I know there will still be a couple of greedy and ignorant people who will continue to think that this is a privacy error and blah blah blah, devilish garbage that leads one to an excessive unnecessary worry.



It's great that you 9to5Mac received this message from Apple, we can say that this is also related to what someone explained about the Files app.



You, who suffer from anxiety and have an excessive worry about whether someone is spying on you, go outside, enjoy time with your families, go out for a walk, relax, in the end you are all going to die and you don't know the day, enjoy your phones and the benefits that technology gives us besides its dark sides.
 
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Pezimak said:
Sorry don't buy it. If the data is marked as deleted it can be overwritten and their claim that very old photos, some a few years from what I heard, are not over written over time doesn't sound plausible to me. I still think cloud services are involved but they'll never tell you if they were.
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You're assuming the storage blocks were truly marked as available for reuse rather than the photo just being removed from the index and the storage remaining marked as in-use.
 
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gpat said:
Really not a satisfactory response from Apple's side. I guess we'll never know the whole truth.
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They are giving the most vague answer and it took them a week to come up with this answer to dismiss what we all know, and that is they are keeping this data stored and don’t want to admit it. I’m calling BS on this, just like I don’t trust that company anymore. At least we know Google is actively harvesting it. My respect for Apple has tanked under Tim Cook. He’s a corp liar like the rest and little in the way of innovation to show for it. I kinda hope Apple sees some headwinds to learn their lessons. They also now offshore their support to India, adding another layer of cheapening the brand because now there is a language barrier. Steve is turning in his grave now. Thanks Timmeh!
 
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prime17569 said:
Honestly I think the best way to understand this is in terms of the iTunes Library on the Mac (which this is conceptually most similar to).

Imagine you have an iTunes Library folder with some songs in it. The iTunes database file in the folder contains pointers to the raw song files. When you use iTunes, it reads the database and shows you songs based on what the database says.

Now let's say you were to delete a song. Normally, iTunes presents you with the option to keep the file on disk or move it to the Trash. You chose to move it to the Trash.

This is where the bug happened: Instead of being moved to the trash (and then being deleted permanently), the file stayed on disk. Now, the database entry for the song is gone -- so you can't see it -- but the file is still there, orphaned on the file system!

Let's also say that over years and years of iCloud backups and restores, the backup code simply copied the iTunes Library folder wholesale without checking the integrity of the database or whether there are any orphaned files.

Now Apple realizes that they are in a pickle: customer devices now have a bunch of orphaned files that have accumulated over the years, and they need to do something about it.

So what do they do? They rescan the folder and reindex any orphaned files in the database.

But uh oh, some of those files were supposed to be deleted! Now the U2 album has reappeared in people's libraries and they are MAD.

Hopefully that explains the issue a little more clearly.
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Really good explanation!
 
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Database corruption happens all the time in Apple land. I don't know what the reasons are. But I had serious problems with iTunes libraries, Photos.app libraries, Mail.app database corruption.

It's not such big deal, when you have access to your files and can actually check what is there and what is missing. That's not possible in iOS, and I think that ought to change.
 
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This is basically what I assumed was going on. The bug was doing what undelete programs do—look for files flagged for deletion and recover them. Files that are “deleted” are still there until you store something new and it overwrites them. It’s been this way forever in an effort to save on long term wear. That’s why there are different levels of formatting, and “write zeroes” multiple times is the only way to avoid this. That’s not something you really want to do on solid state storage if you can help it.
 
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saudor said:
Sounds a lot like deleting files on a typical file system where only the pointer is removed (so you can't see it) but the actual file is still physically on the disk (until overwritten)
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You misunderstand how data deletion works. Once you remove the pointer, you're not getting the file back in any kind of normal operation. The iOS Photos app would have to scan the entire files system looking for JPEG headers and hope the photo wasn't fragmented in order to recover deleted photos.


What's actually happening, is that the photos are not being deleted, simply removed from the Photos database. They continued to be backed up (as all files in backup directories are), and in the recent iOS update, they were reindexed.
 
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Quality escape. Unfortunately stuff like this does happen from time to time. Apple is staffed with humans and humans make mistakes.
 
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yegon said:
I have ZERO faith in their Cloud solutions. In Files, amongst my favourite folders on the left is a folder called “Giant Bomb” where I stored video files from said videogame website…nearly 10 years ago. I ceased using that website years ago, been trying to delete the folder for 7+ years, it goes then reappears randomly even now. Long since given up trying to remove it.

As for the latest issue, the prior update caused my Recently Deleted folder in Files to resurface a load of failed direct downloads of epub files I made about a year ago. They’re still there after the latest .1 update, greyed out, and unable to be deleted. Good work Apple, ha!
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Use the command line to delete those files. I've seen Finder fail to delete partial downloads, sudo rm tends to work.
 
!!! said:
What's actually happening, is that the photos are not being deleted, simply removed from the Photos database. They continued to be backed up (as all files in backup directories are), and in the recent iOS update, they were reindexed.
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100% agree. The files that "resurfaced" were not deleted on the file system, just gone from the database.
 
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i'm the mac daddy said:
They did not say how they fixed this. Are they deleting corrupted files? Is there some kind of garbage collection periodically delete files with no reference? Will iCloud backups only copy files that are known to the file system?

How do we know this will not happen again? I agree with some posters there needs to be more information beyond what Apple said. Their whole cost proposition is that they are a security and privacy first company. This was a bad thing to happen and we need to know how Apple is fixing it and that we can trust them. If something like this happens again. People should be outraged this ever happened in the first place. What other dodgy code practices are being used? Will deleted iCloud messages appear some day? Deleted emails? Deleted app data?
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Sounds like you just want to stay mad. This isn’t dodgy. Nothing nefarious occurred
 
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saudor said:
Sounds a lot like deleting files on a typical file system where only the pointer is removed (so you can't see it) but the actual file is still physically on the disk (until overwritten)
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SO why then during factory reset the filesystem isn't filled with zeros to destroy that data?
 
This does not explain why certain files were not deleted in the first place, and were still present on the disk!

I wonder what else is present on the disk ?
 
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