This seems like Apple's recent MO, lock everyone in with claims of security, but lack any actual extra security. In the end, they treat our data the same way Google does.
This needs a major investigation. It’s really making me think Apple is no better than Google.
Exactly I don’t care about a bug that undeletes a photo that was still in recently deleted section. I want to know why it has the ability to bring back a photo deleted last year.And if you read my post instead of just quoting it, you would see I’m agreeing with you. However, the article calls it a bug in 17.5 and comments call it a recent failure of QA.
I am uninterested in spinning this, only in honesty in how the presence of supposedly deleted photo data is handled.
This is not a 17.5 bug.
Nope.What do you mean by "overwritten by newer data"?
Let's say I delete 10 files, emptry my Trash and then delete another 10 files and empty the trash. Are they overwritten?
Doesn't matter, when you have enabled iCloud backup. Then the photos are inside the backup...Wow. Glad I never turned on iCloud Photos.
Correct, this is also important.Anyone has this happen with Advanced Data Protection on? I have not seen any old pictures resurface or duplicate, have ADP on. Wonder if it made any difference.
Most likely. Undelete programs were quite the thing in the old days. Deleting a file meant that the index to the file was removed from the directory. With the right routine you could reconstruct the directory entry to file IF you hadn't written anything new to the disk since, and sometimes even if you had.I believe they delete them from the index only. The actual files remain there.
This is what I first thought of too.I'm curious to know how the pictures were originally delivered to the users in question. Did they take them with their own phones or perhaps were they sent to them via Messages. If the later, what sort of message retention do they have set (30 days, 1 year, forever)?
Could it be possible that the "Shared With You" option got flipped ON for Photos? (I had turned it off myself but now see it's back ON after the installation of 17.5.)
I only keep messages for 30 days so I don't foresee this as an issue for me, but may be worth checking for others.
It just works.
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
I’m really curious how this happened. I haven’t looked at the storage of Photos recently, but years ago they were just files in a bundle. There was also a index database. So it’s easy to see how an index century could be removed, but maybe the photo file wasn’t. That would be a serious bug. On the other hand, it’s also possible to copy files into the bundle. I know, because I’ve done that by mistake. That will be user error. Photos should be robust enough to not do the first case and catch the second second.Exactly I don’t care about a bug that undeletes a photo that was still in recently deleted section. I want to know why it has the ability to bring back a photo deleted last year.
"I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly."
Yup. I was thinking the same thing.This tells me that your deleted photos are never really deleted.
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.
This is what I first thought of too.
Is it possible that users deleted them from the Photos app, but the photos was originally sent to them by email, Messages, or another messaging app, and the original message with the photo was still with one of those apps, but long forgotten about. And the bug is not that it's "un-deleting" them, but rather reimporting them from the original source?
Something like that.
I've long felt there is something funny going on about the way photo storage works with Messages when it's set to "Enable Messages in iCloud". I bet it's related to this.
This wouldn't be good either, but far less concerning that actually fully deleted (apparently) photos reappearing, which is very concerning.
No to iCloud mail. Calendar with appointments is only on the iPad. As for Contacts, iCloud made such a total mess of my contacts that I decided it's better to put the same entry in three times (iPad, laptop, and desktop linux box) that let Apple's synch abomination screw up again. And I have to enter new data into the linux box by hand anyway.So you don't use
- iCloud Mail?
- Contacts?
- Calendars?