"Honey ! Remember how I told you to delete those photos ? Well Apple......"
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.
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
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Troubling iOS 17.5 Bug Reportedly Resurfacing Old Deleted Photos
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No, no one has. Its just been a strange internet phenomenon that people don't want to tell me what they mean by it.
I honestly don't know what it means because I've seen it used for so many different things that have nothing to do with one another. It seems like a buzzword for left wing for some.
Was referring to this one but yours is also relevant to my theory I believe.
From the ios community on Reddit: Latest iOS update has brought back some pictures I deleted in 2021
Posted by Specialist-Fix8528 - 649 votes and 398 comments
www.reddit.com
It’s worth noting that the oldest documented file in this snafu (known so far) is said to be from 2010.
That’s when PRISM was deep in its operations. And something called “Drop Out Jeep”.
It is quite possible this is something held over from those days. I read on X recently that a security researcher found a line of code in iOS last year that implied that iOS doesn’t always delete data it’s asked to delete. He said he reported it to Apple & after a few correspondents (he has receipts), Apple stopped speaking to him & he’s still yet to be paid.
If you couple this with Apple’s recent “never let me go” ad campaign, it certainly seems to suggest that perhaps Apple either just became aware of this “backdoor” or they got caught & attempted to spin this as a feature in a subliminal manner.
Either way… I don’t feel Apple is going to willingly speak to this. But once nudes start showing up on the family iPads that are linked to iPhones via Photo Stream owned by Congressmen, Tim may have to take a trip to DC.
This is basic cybersecurity 101…you don’t upload any of your private data on anyone else’s servers or offsite out of your hands. Apple should be ashamed of themselves with this iCloud debacle and are proving they’re no better than alphabet, Google, or whatever they’re calling themselves this month. Keep your photos on your own phone’s storage space or offload them to an external hard drive when needed to by cable connection. Don’t trust Apple
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I hear you and that is exactly what I did. Then deleted off of the iPhone.
But low and behold, some have boomeranged!
Macrumors need to getmore on top of this because this is very very bad
www.imore.com
The photos are showing up on wiped phones.
I’m out. Done with this shambles of a company.
Apple's iOS 17.5 photo resurfacing bug just got a whole lot more serious — here's why
Wiped and sold devices are now being affected
www.imore.com
The photos are showing up on wiped phones.
I’m out. Done with this shambles of a company.
Macrumors need to getmore on top of this because this is very very bad
Apple's iOS 17.5 photo resurfacing bug just got a whole lot more serious — here's why
Wiped and sold devices are now being affected
The photos are showing up on wiped phones.
I’m out. Done with this shambles of a company.
Wow if these reports are accurate then that is a cataclysmic security failure and a monumental breech of trust in everything the company purports to stand for. Shields at 5% abandon ship!
Macrumors need to getmore on top of this because this is very very bad
Apple's iOS 17.5 photo resurfacing bug just got a whole lot more serious — here's why
Wiped and sold devices are now being affected
The photos are showing up on wiped phones.
I’m out. Done with this shambles of a company.
This would be absolutely massive if accurate. We really need some bigger outlets to look into this. It is being buried thus far.
I am eagerly awaiting confirmation that photos are reappearing on nuked phones because, if this is true, then it means Apple has always been flat out lying about the erase and reset process.
And even their most ardent defenders would have trouble defending them. Though I'm sure they'd try to anyway.
NEVER iCloud backups. For security reasons- no encryption as it does on your computer- and I didn't / don't trust the cloud
Period.
Thanks for posting that.Macrumors need to getmore on top of this because this is very very bad
Apple's iOS 17.5 photo resurfacing bug just got a whole lot more serious — here's why
Wiped and sold devices are now being affected
The photos are showing up on wiped phones.
I’m out. Done with this shambles of a company.
Was gonna sell my 8+ and 12.9 iPad.
What an unbelievable flustercluck.
Next time Tim Apple does the praying hands nonsense he better get on his knees and do a lot of mea culpas.
They need to buy old, unsellable iPhones and iPads and destroy them.
I don't even trust them to securely recycle them.
I think we now know what has been lurking in that "OTHER" storage category. 
It really seems like for Apple, "Delete" means "Save in a hidden folder that only Apple can access anytime".
Lol seriously what a joke Apple's security has become.
Apple gonna Apple so they'll be able to spin their way out of the use of the term Delete, but if it turns out to be true that those deleted photos are popping up on sold/traded-in devices after an Erase has allegedly been performed, then they're gonna need a bigger lawyer.
Im shocked the ‘loyal’ haven't came out in droves yet to downvote your post.
Never used iCloud, always set up as a new phone after release every year and it still shows me images from 2020.
Yes sadly Apple don't seem to understand what Delete means, which means they probably don't understand what Privacy is either. Apple overpromises and underdelivers, and even with a good lawyer, Apple cannot undo their lost trust.
At this point I feel it’s fairly safe to say it’s related to a delete completion issue that’s likely existed since iOS 1.
A developer on Reddit made a very good point that it could have been a broken race condition that would sometimes delete the links & reference to the photos but not the data. Hiding them from view but leaving the data in the photolibrary. The update reindexed photolibrary & restored the links & references.
Honestly… this is really the only explanation that makes any sense given photolibrary traverses to a new device each time that device is restored from any backup (iCloud or not) or device to device data transfer.
The woman that claimed a bunch of photos came back in her wiped iPad is likely experiencing some separate unrelated issues.
17.5 has been live for 3 days & there have been no other reports of the situation she described. And there is no doubt we’d have heard about it by now had there been.
One thing I’ve noticed is that most people reporting the problem have almost all said they “deleted a large cache” of photos or videos at one time or another. It could be that mass deletions lead to the bug. Who knows?
Best advice… back up files & app data… & photos individually… but not your photo library… then restore the iPhone as new & transfer that backed up data over. It’ll refresh the photolibrary so that any old photos should stay dead since they’re no longer in the library. And anything you delete hence forward *should* stay that way.
Go into...
Settings -> Apple ID -> iCloud -> APPS USING ICLOUD -> Show All -> Messages in iCloud
Is that turned on? For most people it is, whether they know it or not. If so, then you are using iCloud.
If not, did you restore from a backup locally? Because that would restore your Messages history. Does your Messages history go back to 2020? Because that's almost certainly where the images are coming from.
But some users have reported that it happened on sold devices WITHOUT being logged into Apple ID.
So it seems to be either locally or from Apple's servers, and maybe even both.