When you delete a photo, you expect it to disappear forever. But with Apple, that doesn’t seem to be the case, as users are seeing photos they deleted in 2010.
As we mentioned before, Apple has released a fix in iOS and iPadOS 17.5.1. Patching software with bugs is something good and normal. But that’s not the problem here. Here we are talking about photos that should have been deleted over 10 years ago.
The issue is that the correction “fixes a rare problem where photos that suffered database damage could reappear in the Photos library even if they had been deleted”, and that’s all Apple has to say about it.
In iOS, deleted photos technically stay in the Recently Deleted folder for 30 days before disappearing forever, but the intention to send a photo into digital oblivion is still there. A reasonable person would expect a deleted file to stay deleted. That’s why it’s understandable that people were scared last week when photos deleted years ago suddenly reappeared in their iPhone’s photo library.
A privacy issue that scares users and with good reason
Obviously, this is a privacy issue. And it raises valid questions about how Apple stores photo data and whether iPhone owners can truly trust that their deleted data is actually deleted.
The worrying thing is that, as long as Apple remains silent, we have no idea how far this flaw goes. Some iPhone owners have reported experiencing the same issue with deleted voice messages.
Does the issue only affect those who use iCloud photo backups? In another post, it was claimed that old photos appeared on an iPad that had been sold to someone else.
Today’s correction confirms that this failure existed, that it was a problem, and that it had something to do with database corruption. And by ignoring requests to publicly comment on the matter, it does not inspire confidence that this will not happen again.
Author: Chema Carvajal Sarabia
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