Deleted iOS photos still on device. Can someone reproduce this behaviour?

[tmoehle]

Hey guys,

I've found out, that many of the photos, that I deleted over the last month are actually still on the device. They are not in the "recently deleted" list anymore but use up space and can be found using software like iExplorer.

This not only affects your precious iOS device storage, but also has privacy implications.

I wrote a blog article about this, maybe some of you can look into that and tell me, if you can reproduce this behaviour. You have to scroll down a little for the english part of that article:
https://blog.tmoehle.de/ios-photo-problem/

Thanks for your help!

Thomas

 

[davehutch]

Me
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1835601/

Photos (Moments) reports 336 photos and "About" reports 448

If I add up everything in my various Albums, including Recently Deleted, plus my Shared photos however, there are 395 so if I then add the Shared ones that's 435

When I checked using iExplorer a few weeks ago, photos were still on the device that should have already been "permanently" deleted from the Recently Deleted folder i.e. they were two or three months old

 

[I7guy]

Hey guys,

I've found out, that many of the photos, that I deleted over the last month are actually still on the device. They are not in the "recently deleted" list anymore but use up space and can be found using software like iExplorer.

This not only affects your precious iOS device storage, but also has privacy implications.

I wrote a blog article about this, maybe some of you can look into that and tell me, if you can reproduce this behaviour. You have to scroll down a little for the english part of that article:
https://blog.tmoehle.de/ios-photo-problem/

Thanks for your help!

Thomas

Why privacy implications? No different than on ntfs volumes recovering deleted files.

 

[tmoehle]

If you delete a file, of course the data itself stays on the drive, but might get overwritten some day. In this case, the data itself never gets overwritten, since the file is not deleted from the file system. For me right now, there is no way to get rid of these files, since iOS won't show them in the Camera Roll and iExplorer has no option to delete them. I can imagine a lot of situations, where you would like to make sure these "deleted" images are really gone.

 

[decafjava]

I should check this, but have you sent a report to Apple? This is quite a concern.

 

[tmoehle]

I have not yet reported this to Apple. I'd like to make sure first, what's behind this problem. I don't want to blame anyone, as long as it could be me using it wrong.

 

[canesalato]

I have not yet reported this to Apple. I'd like to make sure first, what's behind this problem. I don't want to blame anyone, as long as it could be me using it wrong.

report it, this is not normal behaviour. =)

 

[tmoehle]

There is even a temporary solution:

You can manually set the date of your device back and you will find all your “deleted” pictures of that timespan in the “Recently Deleted” list again. There you can delete them once and for all. Repeat this in 30 days steps until you reach the day you installed iOS 8 (which might be the beginning of June for beta users and September the rest).

 

[Luis G.]

There is even a temporary solution:

You can manually set the date of your device back and you will find all your “deleted” pictures of that timespan in the “Recently Deleted” list again. There you can delete them once and for all. Repeat this in 30 days steps until you reach the day you installed iOS 8 (which might be the beginning of June for beta users and September the rest).

This made me think of the movie Predestination. Lol.

 

[vahighland]

There is even a temporary solution:

You can manually set the date of your device back and you will find all your “deleted” pictures of that timespan in the “Recently Deleted” list again. There you can delete them once and for all. Repeat this in 30 days steps until you reach the day you installed iOS 8 (which might be the beginning of June for beta users and September the rest).

That's the same trick I used to get rid of phantom photos. I thought Apple products were easy to use
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/175608/phantom-photos-stuck-on-my-iphone-that-i-cant-delete

 

[Nyy8]

Same thing happened to me.. I had 3 photos on my phone, but was somehow using 4GB? Which is a lot for a 16GB Phone.

I went into iFile and deleted them under the DCIM Folder. Thank god I was jailbroken or this would have been a pain.