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

[organisum]

Unless an end user specifically chooses secure erase (not available on iOS), erased data remains in place until the storage device is full enough to overwrite previously used areas. This is common knowledge and has been for decades. Unless you have no, basic, technical education—you already know this.

That Apple copies unused blocks of data is inefficient, at best, and very squinty. A company that boasts about protecting consumer data is not likely to miss this by mistake. Maybe, they just aren't very good at programming.

The only other time I've seen something remotely close was Outlook for Mac, in Mac OS 9. 😆

 

[UliBaer]

According this comment, Apple’s explanation is nonsense.

Interesting, could you please reveal the source of that comment?

 

[Atog]

Interesting, could you please reveal the source of that comment?

Yes its from here. Down in comment section.

 

[Tagbert]

Unless an end user specifically chooses secure erase (not available on iOS), erased data remains in place until the storage device is full enough to overwrite previously used areas. This is common knowledge and has been for decades. Unless you have no, basic, technical education—you already know this.

That Apple copies unused blocks of data is inefficient, at best, and very squinty. A company that boasts about protecting consumer data is not likely to miss this by mistake. Maybe, they just aren't very good at programming.

The only other time I've seen something remotely close was Outlook for Mac, in Mac OS 9. 😆

Apple did not copy unused blocks of data. These files were never deleted. They were removed from the Photos app index but due to a Photos bug, they were never deleted. They just sat there in a folder under the Photos app bundle until another process noticed them as orphans and added them to the Photos index again.

 

[drmacnut]

Apple- "It just works"

You mean
Apple: "It jus tworks"

 

[davidhands]

If you know anything about data and data deletion then what Apple said is a clear enough answer as to what happened. If you think deleting a file means it's gone from your storage (on any kind of device) then yeah nothing will be satisfactory.

You ever tried to recover a deleted file from a Linux drive?

Deleted can mean really deleted. It’s just a matter of code.

 

[Croaton1586]

So… different angle here, but I had a large number of photos deleted by accident about a year ago - I’ve long wished there was some way to try and recover them. This is likely a stupid question but is there any way to upgrade to the non-patched iOS update to see if it happens to restore some of the photos?

 

[Tagbert]

So… different angle here, but I had a large number of photos deleted by accident about a year ago - I’ve long wished there was some way to try and recover them. This is likely a stupid question but is there any way to upgrade to the non-patched iOS update to see if it happens to restore some of the photos?

If you have your photos on a Mac, you can try to rebuild the photos index. That will look for photo files that still exist in the folders inside the Photos library. If those photos just disappeared because something went wrong with the index, then they might still be there.

Repair your photo library on Mac

In Photos on your Mac, repair your library if you experience problems with photos.

support.apple.com

 

[StellarVixen]

I wouldn’t let them memoryhole this. We deserve to know how is our data handled, especially coming from a company that advertises so much that it “cares about our privacy”.

 

[lkrupp]

I wouldn’t let them memoryhole this. We deserve to know how is our data handled, especially coming from a company that advertises so much that it “cares about our privacy”.

They have explained all they need to. If you don't believe them then thats your problem. Deal with it or stop using Apple products if you even own or use any Apple products. Many here are not Apple users.

 

[r-m]

This bug brought back memories (and I don't mean rediscovered photos).
Back in 2012, with iOS 6 I believe, there was a bug where deleting iMessages containing attachments, never actually deleted the associated file that we couldn't see. I found them using backup recovery tools, and eventually was able to delete the files using that software and restore that backup reclaiming the space.

I think it turned out it affected more than iMessages attachments, and other media from other apps wasn't actually being deleted from the file system.

Screenshots attached of the "closed/duplicate" email I got from apple's bug reporting system.

 

[sdm1985]

I had a deleted photo reappear yesterday even after this update, it has freaked me out - not that it’s a bad photo, it’s just an old photo and now being the most recent one…

 

[peneaux]

A whole week! My god it’s a miracle society survived. Good grief.

I was concerned about someone accessing my OF pictures and distributing them for free.

💅

 

[reggoboy]

What's not clear from this explanation is whether the following scenario could have happened:

1. start with a user who is currently using iCloud Photos with Shared Library
2. photo local to the device gets undeleted by this iOS bug
3. does the undeleted photo go into the Personal or Shared Library?
4. If Shared, then doesn't it go to iCloud and appear on the devices of everyone else whom the library is shared with?

If this is possible, then the fact that the deleted photo was local to ones device is no comfort at all.

 

[reggoboy]

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.

You're thinking like blocks on a disk device. This involves a database. Apple is not revealing any internals. But I've been programming database software for 40 years, so I'll share a note. Database structures, especially for media, typically involve a bulk data store and an index. In this case, clearly the bulk data was still intact, but the index entry had been long removed. Most likely, some "cleanup" process (like running fsck on Linux) probably audited the "orphaned" media and rebuilt index entries for them, much the way Disk Repair also does. One of those Photo Library repair features that have been around since iPhoto days may have also done something very similar to this.

But just because there was no index entry for that media doesn't mean any process would have recycled that space. This is a classic software data consistency problem, where orphaned data can linger around and grow in a way that it can never be deleted.

On the up side, if we're lucky, Apple is trying to find ways to clean out the fat that is clogging up our devices. They just need to do it in a way that's safe

 

[iManic]

Unless an end user specifically chooses secure erase (not available on iOS), erased data remains in place until the storage device is full enough to overwrite previously used areas. This is common knowledge and has been for decades. Unless you have no, basic, technical education—you already know this.

That Apple copies unused blocks of data is inefficient, at best, and very squinty. A company that boasts about protecting consumer data is not likely to miss this by mistake. Maybe, they just aren't very good at programming.

The only other time I've seen something remotely close was Outlook for Mac, in Mac OS 9. 😆

This is why I always use the iShredder app to overwrite and completely wipe my devices before trading them in or selling them. I've always been told I'm crazy for doing it but doesnt sound so crazy now ...

 

[Tagbert]

You're thinking like blocks on a disk device. This involves a database. Apple is not revealing any internals. But I've been programming database software for 40 years, so I'll share a note. Database structures, especially for media, typically involve a bulk data store and an index. In this case, clearly the bulk data was still intact, but the index entry had been long removed. Most likely, some "cleanup" process (like running fsck on Linux) probably audited the "orphaned" media and rebuilt index entries for them, much the way Disk Repair also does. One of those Photo Library repair features that have been around since iPhoto days may have also done something very similar to this.

But just because there was no index entry for that media doesn't mean any process would have recycled that space. This is a classic software data consistency problem, where orphaned data can linger around and grow in a way that it can never be deleted.

On the up side, if we're lucky, Apple is trying to find ways to clean out the fat that is clogging up our devices. They just need to do it in a way that's safe

That is true. In this case, the bulk data store is the file system and folders. You can see them on the Mac if you open the photos library. It’s really just a special folder with metadata and a specific structure. There are lots of folders in there including many that hold the photo files. the database index is what decides what displays inside the Photos app and that is where the corrupted data caused these files to be hidden instead of deleted.