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Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

wired.com

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Re: Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

#41

Post by refulgentis »

threeseed wrote: post #24
refulgentis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are reports they reappeared on sold phones as well

So they sold a phone with their iCloud account connected. Which means all of their current emails, photos, contacts, bookmarks, browsing history, location etc was also available.

I don't know, I'm just the messenger.

My instinct is also to assume they didn't reset their phone, but I also assumed Apple deleted their photos when they deleted them years ago.

I wouldn't be shocked to find it there's some technical cruft around it being a built in mandatory app, and corrupted data was retained.

In fact, when I think about it, if I wasn't biased towards Apple, my prior after a bug involving photo deletion should be to expect bugs involving photo deletion.

Re: Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

#42

Post by Aloisius »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #29
Aloisius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Em. The patch notes say that: > This update provides important bug fixes and addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted.

Right but where were they resurrected from? A database (local or otherwise) that secretly keeps deleted photos forever? And if so why is it keeping them forever instead of actually deleting them?

I imagine the database corruption prevented the permanent delete from the Recently Deleted folder that's supposed to happen 30 days after you mark something as deleted.

If it behaves anything like the Mac Photos app, then it's using hard links for things like importing photos which can lead to bugs like this if the corruption led to them losing track of one of the hard links, since you have to delete all of them to actually delete the file.

Re: Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

#43

Post by akr4s1a »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #2

Wow this is a huge breach of trust for a company that claims it has strong privacy protections. Also from a different article ( https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24161152/apple-ios-17-pho... ): > Another post claimed that old photos appeared on an iPad that was sold to another person. It is SO weird for Apple to fix the bug in a patch but say nothing about the fact that photos deleted years earlier reappeared for a…

Heavy doubt on the sold to another person story. This sounds like a file was orphaned from its database entry and re-indexed. If you wipe your device like it was supposed to before you sell on your device, the data would be gone and it wouldn't have a remote source like iCloud to sync from either.

Re: Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

#44

Post by alphabettsy »

makeitdouble wrote: post #40
ezfe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "really bad" because they didn't store deleted photos, in general. A bug caused some not to be deleted properly.

A compounding issue would be refurbished, handed down and resold devices. None of the Apple devices have removable SSDs at this point, and many buyers rely on their resale value to shuffle devices every 2 or 3 years. That's a lot of devices in the wild with potentially resurfacing data.

The devices have full-disk encryption. That data is not recoverable without the passcode. If it’s been wiped it’s not recoverable.

Re: Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

#45

Post by dialup_sounds »

refulgentis wrote: post #17
mingus88 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your reasoning? If the deleted file was not shared with anyone else, how is this a “massive invasion of privacy” What law is being broken? This is a bad bug for sure but there have been far worse bugs that have actually leaked PII and endangered peoples lives. What am I missing?

There are reports they reappeared on sold phones as well

There was one deleted reddit post claiming that and five hundred million blog posts that repeated it.

Re: Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

#46

Post by dialup_sounds »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #29
Aloisius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Em. The patch notes say that: > This update provides important bug fixes and addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted.

Right but where were they resurrected from? A database (local or otherwise) that secretly keeps deleted photos forever? And if so why is it keeping them forever instead of actually deleting them?

Most likely the "secret database" is just the filesystem. Keeping things forever is the default behavior of filesystems.

A photo library application is just a database pointing to files in the file system. In some cases photos were deleted from the library database without being deleted from the filesystem. That's the bug.

The consequences are that: 1) the photo appears to be deleted to the user, who goes by what the application tells them 2) the photo appears to be deleted to the application, who goes by what the database says, and 3) the photo miraculously reappears when the filesystem is re-indexed by the application.

Re: Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

#47

Post by ezfe »

makeitdouble wrote: post #40
ezfe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "really bad" because they didn't store deleted photos, in general. A bug caused some not to be deleted properly.

A compounding issue would be refurbished, handed down and resold devices. None of the Apple devices have removable SSDs at this point, and many buyers rely on their resale value to shuffle devices every 2 or 3 years. That's a lot of devices in the wild with potentially resurfacing data.

There's zero actual evidence this is the case and the failure mechanism would extend FAR beyond photos if it were. One post claims they wiped a device and photos came back but I hesitate to trust a single person on the internet.

Re: Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

#49

Post by amatecha »

saysjonathan wrote: post #31
kube-system wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default delete behavior is not that, and it is explicitly documented as such. > When you delete photos and videos, they go to your Recently Deleted album for 30 days. After 30 days, they'll be permanently deleted. https://support.apple.com/en-us/104967

If you then delete from the Recently Deleted album it says that the photo “will deleted the selected photos from iCloud and all connected devices”. Additionally, at least in iOS 17.5, the Recently Deleted album itself has a disclaimer at the bottom that says that “items will be permanently deleted. This may take up to 40 days.”

"This may take up to 40 days"??? what?! Permanent deletion of local files may take over a month?

Re: Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'

#50

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

Aloisius wrote: post #42
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but where were they resurrected from? A database (local or otherwise) that secretly keeps deleted photos forever? And if so why is it keeping them forever instead of actually deleting them?

I imagine the database corruption prevented the permanent delete from the Recently Deleted folder that's supposed to happen 30 days after you mark something as deleted. If it behaves anything like the Mac Photos app, then it's using hard links for things like importing photos which can lead to bugs like this if the corruption led to them losing track of one of the hard links, since you have to delete all of them to a…

That’s a reasonable explanation. Still, they need to be a lot more transparent about what happened and confirm explicitly that those files are deleted now and that in general, files are permanently deleted. I feel like all too often, Apple just stays silent on issues and avoids any semblance of customer support, and that needs to change.
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