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iOS 17.5 Bug May Also Resurface Deleted Photos on Wiped, Sold Devices [Updated]
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Apple devices can definitely stay associated with previously-used Apple IDs even after wiping.
I recently sold a 2019 MacBook Pro. Before the sale we used the “Erase all content and settings” assistant, which is supposed to disassociate with any Apple IDs and iCloud services.
But the buyer complained that they couldn’t log in to Apple Music because of a “this device is already associated with an Apple ID” error.
Turns out we had to, on a new Mac, manually de-authorise the old Mac from System Settings -> Apple ID -> Media & Purchases -> Account, which is different from the device list under System Settings -> Apple ID -> Devices.
(And this is itself a very slow, buggy and glitchy process… signing in to the Account page is slow and always seems to hang on the first attempt, but succeeds on the second! So bad, so buggy…)
And for some weird reason you can no longer de-authorise other devices directly from within Apple Music itself, this functionality is now deeply hidden.
I recently sold a 2019 MacBook Pro. Before the sale we used the “Erase all content and settings” assistant, which is supposed to disassociate with any Apple IDs and iCloud services.
But the buyer complained that they couldn’t log in to Apple Music because of a “this device is already associated with an Apple ID” error.
Turns out we had to, on a new Mac, manually de-authorise the old Mac from System Settings -> Apple ID -> Media & Purchases -> Account, which is different from the device list under System Settings -> Apple ID -> Devices.
(And this is itself a very slow, buggy and glitchy process… signing in to the Account page is slow and always seems to hang on the first attempt, but succeeds on the second! So bad, so buggy…)
And for some weird reason you can no longer de-authorise other devices directly from within Apple Music itself, this functionality is now deeply hidden.
I keep coming back to this article hoping for an update that the redditor was lying or something 😭
Edit: 9to5mac has updated their article to say they don’t think it’s real. But they don’t give any further details as to why
Edit: 9to5mac has updated their article to say they don’t think it’s real. But they don’t give any further details as to why
The story doesn’t seem to have reached much mainstream media. Just Apple enthusiast sites like this one.
Oh I see, I've misunderstood the options. I was under the impression "reset" still set the phone to a seemingly new state, but Apple's docs make it fairly clear that no, from the users point of view, your media and such should still be there.
Well all the more, if they are correct/truthful, that is nuts.
In that case, the best case for Apple will be being able to say if you had Advanced Data Protection on, you were at least immune. Basically anything that means the erase is not a complete erase, that data from the previous user is still accessible after that, is truly disastrous.
I checked the Find My app again:
An iPhone 3GS and two previously owned MacBook Pros (which have never been enabled for Find My!) are showing up in the app, in addition to my current devices. This is weird, I wiped and sold the 3GS many years ago.
What's going on?
An iPhone 3GS and two previously owned MacBook Pros (which have never been enabled for Find My!) are showing up in the app, in addition to my current devices. This is weird, I wiped and sold the 3GS many years ago.
What's going on?
Someone needs to test this, who gave away an old device to a family member or something, and still has physical access to it. Does that family member now have access to your iCloud account? And can *you* actually wipe their device remotely through Find My? If this is really happening it’s one of the biggest issues to hit Apple ever.
Yeah, I don’t buy this story at all. There’s simply no way for a wiped iPad to suddenly recover old photos from before it was wiped. Once you wipe the iPad, the encryption key used to encrypt the devices is erased, with it all of your data is just gibberish. Even if there was a bug in how things were encrypted, that could allow for the recovery of information, it wouldn’t manifest itself like this.
For the people here who claim to have deleted photos reappearing, are you restoring/wiping your devices with a factory reset (connecting your device to a Mac with USB cable and restoring) OR are you using the "Erase Contents and Settings" on-device?
It’s amazing what a fake Reddit story can do. This is fake, it was made by him and some of the other posts related to this are made up by his friends. This guy absolutely has no proof, hence why Apple hasn’t said anything about it.
That’s something else and not related to this. Yes, when you use Apple Music you have to authorize your Mac, that’s to prevent people from using multiple free trials on different accounts. It’s only for 90 days if I recall correctly, but should be easily bypassed if you contact Apple Support. They did it for me as I made a new Apple ID and said I bought my Mac from someone else and it had this authorization thing locked.
To the people wondering how this happened, if it hasn’t been explained yet since I haven’t read all the comments, it is pretty simple.
All iOS devices have 2 partitions, the operating system and the user files. When you erase the iphone or ipad from the device itself it wipes out the user partition. It leaves the os partition intact. The only way to wipe out the os partition is to force the device into recovery mode and reinstall the os from a computer, either a Mac or Windows. Some might remember doing this in iTunes back in the day.
Clearly on some prior version of iOS the os partition was mistakenly storing user files and now with the 17.5 update the os has gained access to those mistakenly stored files even though the user partitions were wiped out.
This is a major f up.
All iOS devices have 2 partitions, the operating system and the user files. When you erase the iphone or ipad from the device itself it wipes out the user partition. It leaves the os partition intact. The only way to wipe out the os partition is to force the device into recovery mode and reinstall the os from a computer, either a Mac or Windows. Some might remember doing this in iTunes back in the day.
Clearly on some prior version of iOS the os partition was mistakenly storing user files and now with the 17.5 update the os has gained access to those mistakenly stored files even though the user partitions were wiped out.
This is a major f up.
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RIP to all of my ex girlfriends .. I switch devices every year and resell on swappa .. there have been some very sexually degrading videos deleted.. creampie surprise and the works. Hopefully the new owners don't post those online anywhere.
eeekkk.. need to tell my mom not to update her phone.. 😭
eeekkk.. need to tell my mom not to update her phone.. 😭
The simplest explanation is often the best. What is more likely, a device can somehow access an Apple id’s files without the encryption key, or that the device previously mistakenly stored files where it shouldn’t have so that even when the user is signed out of the Apple ID it can still read those files that are in the wrong location?
ETA: I used to work for Apple as a tech. I routinely wiped people’s devices to resolve bugs. The dual partition is not a theory but a fact. Erasing the phone from the phone does not erase the operating system partition. Only recovery mode wipes that out and requires a secondary device to download and install the os partition on the device itself.
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ONE person is claiming that images reappeared on a wiped & sold device. I have to believe there is some sort of user error here, because it seems incredibly unlikely that a wiped device could somehow access either iCloud Photos of a deleted account or the camera roll of a wiped device.
Feels kind of "fake newsy" to me.
Images reappearing on devices logged into iCloud accounts seems far more possible, and certainly troubling, but a wiped device? I'm just not buying it.
Feels kind of "fake newsy" to me.
Images reappearing on devices logged into iCloud accounts seems far more possible, and certainly troubling, but a wiped device? I'm just not buying it.
I bought used iPhones for my kids. I'm not gonna' take any chances, so I think I'll update them tonight, and see if their Photos libraries change.
You can’t remote wipe it completely. The only way to force the phone into recovery mode to wipe out the OS is with manual access to the device. With the activation lock you can make the device unusable however so that none of the files can be read and you can wipe out the user partition but that won’t do anything to the OS partition.
Erasing a device only deletes the user partition. The OS partition remains intact which is why you can set it up on a new Apple ID assuming it isn’t activation locker after the “erasing” procedure has completely. The OS partition is still there. If somehow some user files got mixed up in the OS partition then no user error is needed for someone to see those files.