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Troubling iOS 17.5 Bug Reportedly Resurfacing Old Deleted Photos

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There are concerning reports on Reddit that Apple's latest iOS 17.5 update has introduced a bug that causes old photos that were deleted – in some cases years ago – to reappear in users' photo libraries.

iOS-17.5-Feature-Orange.jpg

After updating their iPhone, one user said they were shocked to find old NSFW photos that they deleted in 2021 suddenly showing up in photos marked as recently uploaded to iCloud. Other users have also chimed in with similar stories. "Same here," said one Redditor. "I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly."

"Same thing happened to me," replied another user. "Six photos from different times, all I have deleted. Some I had deleted in 2023." More reports have been trickling in overnight. One said: "I had a random photo from a concert taken on my Canon camera reappear in my phone library, and it showed up as if it was added today."

It's not clear what's happening, but given that some of the photos were apparently taken years ago, this cannot be an issue with recently deleted photos being undeleted. In Apple's Photos app, deleted photos and videos are kept in the Recently Deleted album for 30 days, so that users can recover or permanently remove them from all devices.

The reports could be down to an indexing bug, photo library corruption, or a syncing issue between local devices and iCloud Photos. Another possibility is that in attempting to fix a photo syncing bug that occurred in iOS 17.3, Apple has inadvertently caused a new syncing issue to occur that may involve iCloud backups. Some users running iOS 17.5 developer beta 4 earlier reported similar experiences. We'll update this article when we learn more.

Article Link: Troubling iOS 17.5 Bug Reportedly Resurfacing Old Deleted Photos
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/05/15/ios-17-5-bug-deleted-photos-reappear/
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WOW.

This is a MAJOR breach. “Deleted” must mean “DELETED”! If the photos are resurfacing that means that Apple is somehow storing these photos illegally.

I hope this elicits a congressional inquiry. I’d like to know what other “deleted” data Big Tech is storing.
 
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dricci said:
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the state of Apple Software QC (or complete lack thereof) in 2024. So much for that "security" paying the premium price and living in a walled garden gets you.
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Apple's priorities under Cook have strayed over the years, unfortunately. From a failed decade-long car project to woke political garbage, it's no wonder we're seeing cracks in quality.
 
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Before anyone panicking, let's leave room for these users having somewhere a device with these very old photos cached in some way.

If indeed very old photos resurface out of nowhere this is a very serious bug, enough to justify even a class action lawsuit.

And it's the best response to every bot writing a "what about privacy" comment under every article about a Google product...
 
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I'm in the "me too" camp. I've had 4 pictures reappear after upgrading to 17.5. They were from ~2022.

But I can't say for sure if I actually deleted them, or if it were some of those pictures that I had taken but were never properly saved to the camera roll (that's a bug that sometimes happens). If it's the latter case, it could be Apple found a way to recover those long missing photos which some people complain about from time to time, by reindexing "orphans" in the iPhone file system.
 
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therunningman said:
Apple's priorities under Cook have strayed over the years, unfortunately. From a failed decade-long car project to woke political garbage, it's no wonder we're seeing cracks in quality.
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If anything, it shows why they are so afraid to open up iOS outside of things they 100% control. Apple is depending upon them being the only gatekeeper into the platform because they know where all of the weak spots and skeletons in the iOS platform are. Pay no attention to the man behind the App Store curtain.
 
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ApostolisApo said:
Before anyone panicking, let's leave room for these users having somewhere a device with these very old photos cached in some way.

If indeed very old photos resurface out of nowhere this is a very serious bug, enough to justify even a class action lawsuit.

And the best "sh**-the-f**-up" response to every bot writing "what about privacy" under every Google article...
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For me, several photos that were from 2022 but that were never deleted have been moved to the most recent positions. Apple never ceases to impress with their arbitrary bugs.

As I often say, they are like my old mechanic -- fix one thing, break three things. I would go in to fix the AC. When I picked up, the AC was fixed, but the trunk would no longer lock. That's Apple.
 
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abatabia said:
There were only how many betas? I can’t with the bugs. It gets worse and worse. How are they expected to introduce AI on 18 when they still can’t get 17 right? Just my opinion.
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So why are you still an Apple user if things keep getting worse and worse? Where is your red line that will make you move to Android?

So many betas and no one reported this? Developers, MacRumors denizens who love to install beta releases and complain about them, and no one reported this? Please explain. MacRumors staff didn’t report this in all the beta releases they cackled about?

An alleged, gigantic, massive, hideous bug like this supposed one surely would have been picked up and reported by any of you during the beta process, right?

No, things are not getting worse and worse, they are getting better an better with each update. Juts my opinion.
 
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Tim Cook has overseen the utter and complete devolution of Apple’s overall software offering experience. What used to be a feature is fast becoming the core problem haunting the whole experience.

So many things that used to “just work” don’t work at all anymore, new features and apps are introduced with wholesale non-starter issues, and the bugs, oh the bugs.

We need a real product person that uses these devices for opening more than their daily bean counter reports to be leading Apple again. The whole of the experience has completely fallen apart.
 
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kenni417 said:
weird issue for me as well, but instead of photos i had deleted, about 300 photos taken/saved from 2020 duplicated in my photo library as if i had just taken them today. i had to select all of them and delete but they reappeared the second time. thought i was going crazy.
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Welp, can confirm my duplicates which I clean up regularly exploded too; now “featuring” 902 duplicates that weren’t there before. Unreal. And to think Photos is one of the few apps I’ve still defended to my friends complaining about Apple.
 
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