iOS 17.5 Bug May Also Resurface Deleted Photos on Wiped, Sold Devices [Updated]

[AppleFan91]

Pure fearmongering? Shame on MacRumors for jumping on it so hard with zero verification, if so.

I’m in agreement at this point. I get it’s MacRumors, but at some point, there needs to be some cutoff just above passing a Reddit post from a new Reddit account as a possible rumor, especially when it could be this bad.

If others corroborated it, then sure.

To top it all off, they’ve yet to even update the article. 9to5mac updated their article to at least say they believe this to be false.

 

[tomchr9]

Pure fearmongering? Shame on MacRumors for jumping on it so hard with zero verification, if so.

I’m in agreement at this point. I get it’s MacRumors, but at some point, there needs to be some cutoff just above passing a Reddit post from a new Reddit account as a possible rumor, especially when it could be this bad.

If others corroborated it, then sure.

To top it all off, they’ve yet to even update the article. 9to5mac updated their article to at least say they believe this to be false.

Nope, one should not condone any kind of censorship. MacRumors should not aspire to be an epistemic bubble nor an echo chamber.

As an adult, I am fully capable of making up my own mind regarding the credibility of facts and rumors.

 

[djcraze]

Just another reason I believe Apple’s software team should all get the boot. They can’t do updates right, they can’t seem to put in features folks actually find useful, and now this great debacle…seriously. Clean house and bring in a team that knows what it is they’re doing.

We don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Executives might be pushing them hard for more features without any time for going over technical debt. It happens so much in the industry. I don't think this is the fault of the software team. I think this is the fault of executives not giving time for the software team to do a good job.

 

[AppleFan91]

Nope, one should not condone any kind of censorship. MacRumors should not aspire to be an epistemic bubble nor an echo chamber.

As an adult, I am fully capable of making up my own mind regarding the credibility of facts and rumors.

Sorry, but asking for a slightly higher bar above simply taking a brand new Reddit accounts first post and making a story out of it, without ANY corroborating evidence is not “censorship”. It’s responsible reporting.

 

[Furrr]

The biggest issue of all, even bigger than photos showing up on sold devices, is that deleted photos are apparently still saved on Apple’s servers. We need to know how and why!

 

[chrono1081]

Edge cases should be tested by any developer worth their salt before promotion to QA, and QA should be testing said edge cases also. If this is not an SOP at Apple then it damn well should be.

QA isn't a promotion from developer, developer is much higher than QA.

 

[chrono1081]

We don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Executives might be pushing them hard for more features without any time for going over technical debt. It happens so much in the industry. I don't think this is the fault of the software team. I think this is the fault of executives not giving time for the software team to do a good job.

This is probably the real story. People don't realize how utterly detrimental project management types are to actual good products. It's all about pushing something out first to please the shareholders, completeness be damned.

 

[rehkram]

QA isn't a promotion from developer, developer is much higher than QA.

"Promotion" is nothing to do with salary, seniority or status in this use case.

It means moving (promoting) software through different dev & testing stages and, finally, promotion into production. You can find this system in large IT team environments that develop and support integrated applications.

A common promotion sequence is Dev > QA testing > UA testing (user acceptance) > Production. If anything wrong is found by QA or UA it's checked back out of whatever stage it was at when the problem was found, back to the Dev environment. When the developer has fixed or modified it per discussion with the QA or UA tester, it's promoted again through the same sequence and re-tested along the way.

When called on to fix- or modify Production code, the code is "checked out" of Production back to Dev, and follows the same promotion sequence. Good QA- and UA testers are the developer's best friend. I always made a point of thanking them for testing my code, whether they found anything or not.

 

[The_Auryn]

Only place I can think of is iCloud backup. Apple never claimed those were encrypted.

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).

 

[chrono1081]

"Promotion" is nothing to do with salary, seniority or status in this use case.

It means moving (promoting) software through different dev & testing stages and, finally, promotion into production. You can find this system in large IT team environments that develop and support integrated applications.

A common promotion sequence is Dev > QA testing > UA testing (user acceptance) > Production. If anything wrong is found by QA or UA it's checked back out of whatever stage it was at when the problem was found, back to the Dev environment. When the developer has fixed or modified it per discussion with the QA or UA tester, it's promoted again through the same sequence and re-tested along the way.

When called on to fix- or modify Production code, the code is "checked out" of Production back to Dev, and follows the same promotion sequence. Good QA- and UA testers are the developer's best friend. I always made a point of thanking them for testing my code, whether they found anything or not.

Sorry I misunderstood your context. I thought you meant as in someone going from a developer to QA job wise.

 

[arc of the universe]

it almost seems as if this could not be true.
one would imagine that user data is, at the highest, ultimate, overarching level, always and only associated with a particular apple id.
if the apple id does not match, user data would not sync to that device.

this problem would be totally different from people who may have experienced user deleted data that have later reappeared while using the same apple id.

so, for this story to be true, apple would also need to be noting some kind of device id, such as the unique plain-jane serial number of a device (which is unlikely), or, (more likely) what is known as the Device ID, which all modern smart anything devices have (and are required to have) and are totally unique in the world from each other. then, at some point in the syncing instructions its primarily just looking for ok to sync based on th Device ID itself and not the apple id, or, somehow not associating a new apple id that has become associated with that device.

additionally, how could two photo libraries from two different apple ids be combined into the same device.
if photos that became synced were from a perviously shared photo library with that person, the synching might be more understandable.

but as it stands, this rumour sounds improbable to me.
i rate it -2
(on a scale of -3 being totally impossible to +3 being totally likely)

 

[Mescagnus]

The biggest issue of all, even bigger than photos showing up on sold devices, is that deleted photos are apparently still saved on Apple’s severs. We need to know how and why!

I concur. For a company that prides of privacy, any deleted photo appearing after the stated 30 days have passed is a major blow to credibility.

I haven't upgraded to 17.5 yet, and I won't until there's more light on this issue. I've used iCloud since iCloud became available. Deleted years old photos popping up again in recent photos has a lot of unwanted consequences. Like, for example, years ago deleted photos of an ex showing up in the Photos app of an Apple TV – syncing recent photos from iCloud – when looking at photos with your current partner.

There are a lot of scenarios where old deleted photos re-appearing even on your own devices violates personal privacy.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

To those who said it only happened to one person: From what I’ve been reading in this thread it’s happened to many other people too, or am I mistaken?

 

[arc of the universe]

Nope, one should not condone any kind of censorship. MacRumors should not aspire to be an epistemic bubble nor an echo chamber.

As an adult, I am fully capable of making up my own mind regarding the credibility of facts and rumors.

thanks for sharing.

for me,

MacRumors is a fun site. an apple related info chat site, even for its articles that it publishes on it its site (that is, different from the forum posts). that makes MacRumors in total an echo chamber for all. bar none. believe what ever you want.

for news related sites, which MacRumors is not, i fully expect those news sites to fully and independently, multiple source all news it reports. i dont like News sites being echo chambers at all. i do trust that news sites that demonstrably do that are far better than i, an individual, to tell me what is happening and make connections about larger events.

 

[nt5672]

Just another reason I believe Apple’s software team should all get the boot. They can’t do updates right, they can’t seem to put in features folks actually find useful, and now this great debacle…seriously. Clean house and bring in a team that knows what it is they’re doing.

I all for accountability. But, my experience is that most developers want to do it right, but management mandates unreasonable limits on project schedule and resources which in turn limits software quality and functionality. That is what Apple's current software development approach smells like.

 

[Agilis]

Edge cases should be tested by any developer worth their salt before promotion to QA, and QA should be testing said edge cases also. If this is not an SOP at Apple then it damn well should be.

Edge cases are not caught by developers. Developers will account for as many scenarios as possible. However, edge cases are scenarios that QA discovers by testing outside the means of what the developer expects and/or planned for. It is then up to the developer to resolve the issue before it is raised to a position in the workflow that allows QA to retest that scenario.

Perhaps iOS 17.5 touched code that is causing this issue but Apple did not properly and effectively communicate that to the QA department.

You’re angry, I get it. But really you should be upset that thousands and thousands of users who test iOS before the public receives it did not experience this issue… and if they did, it was not reported or handled properly.

 

[Heelpir8]

And the original Reddit post has been deleted…

Maybe the author realized whatever happened was their bad.

 

[ralphthemagi]

I concur. For a company that prides of privacy, any deleted photo appearing after the stated 30 days have passed is a major blow to credibility.

I haven't upgraded to 17.5 yet, and I won't until there's more light on this issue. I've used iCloud since iCloud became available. Deleted years old photos popping up again in recent photos has a lot of unwanted consequences. Like, for example, years ago deleted photos of an ex showing up in the Photos app of an Apple TV – syncing recent photos from iCloud – when looking at photos with your current partner.

There are a lot of scenarios where old deleted photos re-appearing even on your own devices violates personal privacy.

No one really deletes data. This is why E2EE is so important. Strong encryption is the best you can hope for.

Big cloud services are only going to fully delete your data from all backups and records if they deem it in their interest for cost reasons (e.g. repurposing infrastructure).

 

[izzy0242mr]

i rate it -2
(on a scale of -3 being totally impossible to +3 being totally likely)

What a strange range for a scale.

 

[v3rlon]

Since no one mentioned it on the first page, "according to one Reddit user who pinky swears they did everything by the book exactly as Apple instructed....."

All the others had people logging back in to their iCloud accounts. IF this is true (big IF), it is a problem. I am not ready to accept it is true from one post on Reddit.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Like I said above, sloppy code and sloppy APIs. Attention to edge cases are what makes security tight. If a sync is interrupted it should be deleted. Not doing so is bad code and Apple's OS code is riddled with this kind of sloppiness.

How do you know this?

 

[Agilis]

How do you know this?

They don’t know. They are just angry & ready to bash Apple first chance they get.

 

[DroidBro]

I honestly doubt this.

 

[Jonnsnow]

Lol the redditor not only deleted that post but also EVERY SINGLE COMMENT he ever posted

whats interesting is that he also deleted another post where he was asking people if he should report his teaching assistant in his local university

This is important because a tech support guy left a comment stating:

“One of the rules of troubleshooting is never take what a user says at face value. They swear up and down they rebooted the computer? Don't take that at face value, dig a little further with a couple questions, and you find out all they did was turn the monitor off and back on.”

Link to comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/s/pLhMFSp5TF

OP responded by stating that they also work as a tech support, while the other reddit posts from only a couple months ago suggests they’re in uni/college in a completely different unrelated field?

You cant verify this for yourself since he deleted everything but heres a comment corroborating what i’m saying (i saw the posts & comments myself a few days ago btw)

“Homie you keep saying you work in tech support but six months ago you were trying to report your TA at U Vic.”

Link to comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cspwh2/_/l4a2gu0

 

[rehkram]

Edge cases are not caught by developers.

I totally disagree. Whether a developer catches edge case problems depends on a few things. In no particular order:

• Imagination - You've really got to try hard to dream up new ways to break the code and all the entities it touches in the system. Some are better than others at understanding how users- or background processes might use apps, i.e. in unexpected ways. So they learn the hard way, which will tend to make their code more bullet proof in future.
• Motivation - It's a matter of pride and professionalism. If you believe you were born to do this you do it right. That was me from the beginning of my career.
• Experience - Inexperienced devs are at a disadvantage; they haven't seen enough yet to go looking for the type of trouble that can occur in production. "Confirmation bias" is in play for them: "well I ran it a few times and worked as designed for me". Elementary mistake.
• Time allocated - Time pressures are a factor. You simply have to deal with this at every stage of your career and communicate effectively with your manager if you need more time. When you reach a senior level, management may actually listen to you!

As for me being angry? Nope. I'm just doing what a good analyst programmer always does, looking for the point of failure in the system. I believe the problem Apple is having with bugs is workflow-related, leading to inadequate testing which allows bugs to get into production and remain there over several releases. That is anathema to me.

Do they even have an in-house "user acceptance testing" phase? Or is that what the beta program is expected to provide? That's my best guess. If so that's just wishful thinking.

Also, "software entropy" is now in play for both macOS & iOS. They've both been around for a long time, a lot of mods, fixes, redundant code, outdated code, hard coding, and so on. Nothing that a total rewrite couldn't fix; the situation will continue to deteriorate incrementally otherwise, that's just plain logic.