8 ms·

iPhone owners say the latest iOS update is resurfacing deleted nudes

63 points by Viraxi 2y ago

dotcoma 2y ago
Only nudes ?
- Viraxi 2y ago
  Everything, no. Just old deleted photos.
- izzydata 2y ago
  Nudes might have a higher probability of being deleted.
- klyrs 2y ago
  Many people don't want to risk accidentally surfacing a nude while showing off other pictures and delete them more or less immediately. So it's merely a bright-line indicator; where other decisions to delete or not may be more easily forgotten.
user90131313 2y ago
how is this even possible? this feels like beyond a bug so maybe a hidden feature?
- hypeatei 2y ago
  Yeah, I get that files aren't truly "deleted" until they're overwritten but these pictures didn't have their data messed with over 5+ years? Hard to believe. At this point, assume any data that touched an internet connected device is sitting somewhere you don't want it to be.
  - Viraxi 2y ago
    Imagine the privacy violations of refurbished iPhones. You buy an iPhone or get a trade in that’s a refurb and you suddenly have randoms “nudes” appearing in your recents? This can’t be right….
    - brianwawok 2y ago
      Pretty sure its encrypted with your private key. There would be no way for someone else to ever see your data, unless I am totally misunderstanding how Apple does this.
    - alamortsubite 2y ago
      Refurbs are presumably factory-reset before resale, which in turn presumably includes zeroing out user storage. Presumably. The issue in TFA is probably different. If files are only marked for deletion and their data never overwritten, it's conceivable they might show up again after a buggy update. Of course, one would assume iOS would actually delete the data of files marked for deletion after some expiry, but it's also possible this wasn't happening.
      - manquer 2y ago
        Beyond deleting the reference to file , Delete the data on disk means one of two things : Overwrite with zeros or have another file contents written over it . Overwrite with zeros is generally not done as default in flash memories to improve disk life, flash memories have a limited number of times they can be written too, so most memory controllers will try to distribute writes This seems less a OS bug, more likely iOS/iCloud had a bug on marking deletion correctly
        jasomill 2y ago
        "Overwrite" on flash requires erasing the block containing the data you wish to overwrite, so pre-erasing blocks that will never be used again until rewritten doesn't reduce available write cycles, and can improve both endurance and performance. Two potential issues when relying on flash erasure for privacy, neither of which apply to a full device wipe: 1. Filesystem allocation units are almost always smaller than flash erase blocks; erasing and rewriting, e.g., a 1MB flash block whenever a single 4 kB allocation unit it contains is freed will lead to performance and endurance problems. 2. On desktop and laptop systems, erase (ATA TRIM/SCSI UNMAP/NVMe Deallocate) operations are typically deferred to a low-priority or periodic background task for performance reasons; the same may apply to iOS devices. In the case of full device wipes on modern Apple devices (iOS and Apple Silicon Mac), this is mostly moot anyway from a privacy perspective, because encrypted storage makes data effectively unreadable as soon as encryption keys are wiped.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    I've always really hated how Apple (and a growing number of companies) are deliberately blurring the distinction between local and cloud storage. When I store a photo somewhere, I want to know where it is, on the device or in the cloud. When you look through Photos (and many other apps) this is not very clear. They're all just in this nebulous "Library" which could be actually anywhere. I think a lot of people are uploading private pictures to the Internet without even being aware of it because of how tricky and sneaky companies are being, nudging you to Cloud-ify everything without explaining clearly that "Cloud" ultimately means "Posted to someone else's computer."
    - hypeatei 2y ago
      You're spot on. The lines are being blurred and it's already biting us.
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        When the whole celebrity nude leak thing happened a while back, my first instinct was to victim blame: "Why on earth would you do that? Upload your nudes to the Internet (iCloud)? Are you insane?" But, the UI absolutely doesn't help: It's not even remotely clear that when you take a photo, it's not going into some private library, but it's instead being uploaded. So you kind of have to have some sympathy. I'm sure a lot of people are fooled by this.
      - Intralexical 2y ago
        "Cloud storage" does feel kinda magical to use. But it turns out it elides over some details that are kinda important. The other half of the story is data loss. Will the files still be there if you leave them alone for a day or a year? Who knows?? Will they really be gone if you delete them? There's literally no way to tell!
  - Intralexical 2y ago
    > Yeah, I get that files aren't truly "deleted" until they're overwritten but these pictures didn't have their data messed with over 5+ years? While the data may technically remain, unless the storage medium explicitly specifies otherwise (like E.G. snapshotting filesystems), "deleting" does often imply immediately overwriting enough metadata that it probably shouldn't be possible for the files to be trivially/accidentally resurfaced by a bug.
  - doublepg23 2y ago
    The internet is always permanent except when you want it to be. I wish I could find the video I uploaded to YouTube when me and my friends were kids. I deleted it out of embarrassment when I was older but it was so funny. (Video involved us getting shocked by a CRTs capacitor on camera).
  - chatmasta 2y ago
    Also note that this could include every screenshot you’ve ever taken: 1. “Sync to iCloud” is enabled in Photos 2. You take a screenshot, it saves to photos, it syncs to iCloud 3. You delete the screenshot from Photos …is there still a copy in iCloud? Maybe…
- jxramos 2y ago
  I wonder how people have ruled out just iCloud storage not downloading stuff on device for weird reasons. Like were the photos also deleted from iCloud or just on device?
- jokoon 2y ago
  An non-conspiracy would be that iOS confused deleted data as corrupted data and recovered it, although that's quite a bad bug, although maybe it just happened during a deployment script I guess? Remember: deleting data only removed inodes, not raw data: the raw data get overwritten with time. The more full you storage is, the faster that data gets overwritten. iPhone have a lot of storage, so yeah, most likely a bad deployment script. Still not good for such a company. A conspiracy would be a worker tasked by NSA to introduce such a bug to keep deleted files as long as possible, "just in case", for spying matters.
theGeatZhopa 2y ago
some function leftover from the csam / on device scan - because also deleted pictures are csam. Its a feature for the police. Sorry guys.
- schaefer 2y ago
  what hard evidence do you have to support this accusation? 1) You've accused the iphone users of having CSAM on their device, and 2) you've attributed a motive to Apple inc. as the root cause of the technical issue.
  - megous 2y ago
    what hard evidence do you have that the parent post is meant seriously?
  - theGeatZhopa 2y ago
    1) read it again without being aroused please 2) https://www.wired.com/story/apple-communication-safety-nude-detection/ https://www.wired.com/story/apple-communication-safety-nude-... they have some motives, obviously .. it's a technical issue, you're right.
- legitster 2y ago
  According to Apple, their CSAM only applies to iCloud and would only need the photo at the moment of uploaded https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_for_Children_Frequently_Asked_Questions.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...
  - theGeatZhopa 2y ago
    Yeah they retracted the plans to scan locally on device as I may remember. Somehow, I remember it as being reported exactly in that connection "csam & on device" before imgvideo-files are being sent and encrypted in messengers. Intercepting later can't be easily done.. They retracted and said after criticism "we do it on iCloud". Then a link to be found on goog or few comments further down, says, they wanted to do it on iCloud. But everyone is going rage mode. So they retracted and wanted to do it with more "privacy" on device.. and then, the link also say, they created an API to filter what for example kids should not see or send and app developers can use it. iCloud scanning is ok with me and my privacy advisor. There are bad guys out there.
mrbuttons454 2y ago
I've seen this on photos sent via iMessage, even before this update. I have the feature enabled where photos sent to you from certain contacts automatically show in your photo library. Some photos... do not need to remain. I can delete them, but they return. May be related, may not be. I do wish iOS had a better "hidden photos" concept.
- navanchauhan 2y ago
  The Photos app does have a special hidden album now, and requires biometrics to unlock (or your password). You can also ask the app to not showcase certain people or photos in features photos / widgets.
tedunangst 2y ago
This happened to me! Well, some of it anyway. I updated to iOS 17.5.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bogwog 2y ago
If Apple wants to train some AI model, using the photos and documents on everyone's iPhone/iPad would be very convenient. People will have their privacy violated and potentially their lives destroyed, but the ends (maximizing shareholder value) justify the means. Alternatively, maybe this is just a stupid way to try to push people into buying more overpriced iCloud storage? There's no way those pictures survived "years" on the disk without being overwritten and somehow were accidentally restored with an update.
Intralexical 2y ago
So, what's the GDPR say about the backend keeping photos or voicemails that the user "deleted" years ago— And doing so inaccessibly and in secret from the user?
- busymom0 2y ago
  As per the article, this isn't specific to iCloud: > This could be more innocent than it sounds. Computer data is never actually “deleted” until it’s overwritten with new 1s and 0s — operating systems simply cut off references to it. One user also said they saw a photo return even though they don’t sync their phone or use iCloud, implying the photos could be originating from on-device storage.
  - jmholla 2y ago
    Except, the computer needs to know where to point to to read the data. So why are they keeping the index/inode around? Unless they're doing some unrequested data recovery to find these files?
    - friend_and_foe 2y ago
      Yup, exactly. If it's removed from the index it won't just show up again one day. This tells me that that innocuous explanation is not what's going on here.
  - Intralexical 2y ago
    On the Reddit threads, there are also users reporting photos returning after being deleted from a different Apple device of a different type— Even when the original device did not have ICloud enabled. It's very odd. For it to be a local storage issue, it seems like IOS would have to be copying entire disk images across devices and accidentally doing file carving on freed resources. So I think ICloud is the most plausible technical explanation currently. At the same time, a cloud storage issue implies either malice or incompetence at a level that we currently only have indirect evidence of.
- noiseinvacuum 2y ago
johnea 2y ago
I guess they weren't as "deleted" as people thought...
- friend_and_foe 2y ago
  This is the thing stating people in the face that many don't want to just observe and accept. You didn't sync something to icloud and somehow it's undeleted? It was synced to somewhere. This plainly points to a massive, industrial scale invasion of people's privacy that apple fanboys are not going to acknowledge.
loongloong 2y ago
excerpt from article : "And a person claimed in a later post that “around 300” of their old pictures, some of which were “revealing,” appeared on an iPad they’d wiped per Apple’s guidelines and sold to a friend." Is this true? Did a quick scan of the reddit posts referenced in the article and could not find this particular post. But it probably its my fault scanning too fast. More worrisome is, is the scenario possible? Assuming "wiped per Apple's guidelines" was indeed followed, isn't that technically not possible since the encryption keys were wiped?
- jadamson 2y ago
  https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cspwh2/my_old_photos_appeared_on_an_ipad_i_sold/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cspwh2/my_old_photos_...
- chatmasta 2y ago
  Risks like this is why I don’t sell my old personal devices. A few hundred bucks is not worth the potential security compromise.

63 points by Viraxi 2y ago

dotcoma 2y ago

Only nudes ?

Viraxi 2y ago
Everything, no. Just old deleted photos.
izzydata 2y ago
Nudes might have a higher probability of being deleted.
klyrs 2y ago
Many people don't want to risk accidentally surfacing a nude while showing off other pictures and delete them more or less immediately. So it's merely a bright-line indicator; where other decisions to delete or not may be more easily forgotten.

user90131313 2y ago

how is this even possible? this feels like beyond a bug so maybe a hidden feature?

hypeatei 2y ago
Yeah, I get that files aren't truly "deleted" until they're overwritten but these pictures didn't have their data messed with over 5+ years? Hard to believe. At this point, assume any data that touched an internet connected device is sitting somewhere you don't want it to be.
- Viraxi 2y ago
  Imagine the privacy violations of refurbished iPhones. You buy an iPhone or get a trade in that’s a refurb and you suddenly have randoms “nudes” appearing in your recents? This can’t be right….
  - brianwawok 2y ago
    Pretty sure its encrypted with your private key. There would be no way for someone else to ever see your data, unless I am totally misunderstanding how Apple does this.
  - alamortsubite 2y ago
    Refurbs are presumably factory-reset before resale, which in turn presumably includes zeroing out user storage. Presumably. The issue in TFA is probably different. If files are only marked for deletion and their data never overwritten, it's conceivable they might show up again after a buggy update. Of course, one would assume iOS would actually delete the data of files marked for deletion after some expiry, but it's also possible this wasn't happening.
    - manquer 2y ago
      Beyond deleting the reference to file , Delete the data on disk means one of two things : Overwrite with zeros or have another file contents written over it . Overwrite with zeros is generally not done as default in flash memories to improve disk life, flash memories have a limited number of times they can be written too, so most memory controllers will try to distribute writes This seems less a OS bug, more likely iOS/iCloud had a bug on marking deletion correctly
      - jasomill 2y ago
        "Overwrite" on flash requires erasing the block containing the data you wish to overwrite, so pre-erasing blocks that will never be used again until rewritten doesn't reduce available write cycles, and can improve both endurance and performance. Two potential issues when relying on flash erasure for privacy, neither of which apply to a full device wipe: 1. Filesystem allocation units are almost always smaller than flash erase blocks; erasing and rewriting, e.g., a 1MB flash block whenever a single 4 kB allocation unit it contains is freed will lead to performance and endurance problems. 2. On desktop and laptop systems, erase (ATA TRIM/SCSI UNMAP/NVMe Deallocate) operations are typically deferred to a low-priority or periodic background task for performance reasons; the same may apply to iOS devices. In the case of full device wipes on modern Apple devices (iOS and Apple Silicon Mac), this is mostly moot anyway from a privacy perspective, because encrypted storage makes data effectively unreadable as soon as encryption keys are wiped.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I've always really hated how Apple (and a growing number of companies) are deliberately blurring the distinction between local and cloud storage. When I store a photo somewhere, I want to know where it is, on the device or in the cloud. When you look through Photos (and many other apps) this is not very clear. They're all just in this nebulous "Library" which could be actually anywhere. I think a lot of people are uploading private pictures to the Internet without even being aware of it because of how tricky and sneaky companies are being, nudging you to Cloud-ify everything without explaining clearly that "Cloud" ultimately means "Posted to someone else's computer."
  - hypeatei 2y ago
    You're spot on. The lines are being blurred and it's already biting us.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      When the whole celebrity nude leak thing happened a while back, my first instinct was to victim blame: "Why on earth would you do that? Upload your nudes to the Internet (iCloud)? Are you insane?" But, the UI absolutely doesn't help: It's not even remotely clear that when you take a photo, it's not going into some private library, but it's instead being uploaded. So you kind of have to have some sympathy. I'm sure a lot of people are fooled by this.
    - Intralexical 2y ago
      "Cloud storage" does feel kinda magical to use. But it turns out it elides over some details that are kinda important. The other half of the story is data loss. Will the files still be there if you leave them alone for a day or a year? Who knows?? Will they really be gone if you delete them? There's literally no way to tell!
- Intralexical 2y ago
  > Yeah, I get that files aren't truly "deleted" until they're overwritten but these pictures didn't have their data messed with over 5+ years? While the data may technically remain, unless the storage medium explicitly specifies otherwise (like E.G. snapshotting filesystems), "deleting" does often imply immediately overwriting enough metadata that it probably shouldn't be possible for the files to be trivially/accidentally resurfaced by a bug.
- doublepg23 2y ago
  The internet is always permanent except when you want it to be. I wish I could find the video I uploaded to YouTube when me and my friends were kids. I deleted it out of embarrassment when I was older but it was so funny. (Video involved us getting shocked by a CRTs capacitor on camera).
- chatmasta 2y ago
  Also note that this could include every screenshot you’ve ever taken: 1. “Sync to iCloud” is enabled in Photos 2. You take a screenshot, it saves to photos, it syncs to iCloud 3. You delete the screenshot from Photos …is there still a copy in iCloud? Maybe…
jxramos 2y ago
I wonder how people have ruled out just iCloud storage not downloading stuff on device for weird reasons. Like were the photos also deleted from iCloud or just on device?
jokoon 2y ago
An non-conspiracy would be that iOS confused deleted data as corrupted data and recovered it, although that's quite a bad bug, although maybe it just happened during a deployment script I guess? Remember: deleting data only removed inodes, not raw data: the raw data get overwritten with time. The more full you storage is, the faster that data gets overwritten. iPhone have a lot of storage, so yeah, most likely a bad deployment script. Still not good for such a company. A conspiracy would be a worker tasked by NSA to introduce such a bug to keep deleted files as long as possible, "just in case", for spying matters.

theGeatZhopa 2y ago

some function leftover from the csam / on device scan - because also deleted pictures are csam. Its a feature for the police. Sorry guys.

schaefer 2y ago
what hard evidence do you have to support this accusation? 1) You've accused the iphone users of having CSAM on their device, and 2) you've attributed a motive to Apple inc. as the root cause of the technical issue.
- megous 2y ago
  what hard evidence do you have that the parent post is meant seriously?
- theGeatZhopa 2y ago
  1) read it again without being aroused please 2) https://www.wired.com/story/apple-communication-safety-nude-detection/ https://www.wired.com/story/apple-communication-safety-nude-... they have some motives, obviously .. it's a technical issue, you're right.
legitster 2y ago
According to Apple, their CSAM only applies to iCloud and would only need the photo at the moment of uploaded https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_for_Children_Frequently_Asked_Questions.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...
- theGeatZhopa 2y ago
  Yeah they retracted the plans to scan locally on device as I may remember. Somehow, I remember it as being reported exactly in that connection "csam & on device" before imgvideo-files are being sent and encrypted in messengers. Intercepting later can't be easily done.. They retracted and said after criticism "we do it on iCloud". Then a link to be found on goog or few comments further down, says, they wanted to do it on iCloud. But everyone is going rage mode. So they retracted and wanted to do it with more "privacy" on device.. and then, the link also say, they created an API to filter what for example kids should not see or send and app developers can use it. iCloud scanning is ok with me and my privacy advisor. There are bad guys out there.

mrbuttons454 2y ago

I've seen this on photos sent via iMessage, even before this update. I have the feature enabled where photos sent to you from certain contacts automatically show in your photo library. Some photos... do not need to remain. I can delete them, but they return. May be related, may not be. I do wish iOS had a better "hidden photos" concept.

navanchauhan 2y ago
The Photos app does have a special hidden album now, and requires biometrics to unlock (or your password). You can also ask the app to not showcase certain people or photos in features photos / widgets.

tedunangst 2y ago

This happened to me! Well, some of it anyway. I updated to iOS 17.5.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bogwog 2y ago

If Apple wants to train some AI model, using the photos and documents on everyone's iPhone/iPad would be very convenient. People will have their privacy violated and potentially their lives destroyed, but the ends (maximizing shareholder value) justify the means. Alternatively, maybe this is just a stupid way to try to push people into buying more overpriced iCloud storage? There's no way those pictures survived "years" on the disk without being overwritten and somehow were accidentally restored with an update.

Intralexical 2y ago

So, what's the GDPR say about the backend keeping photos or voicemails that the user "deleted" years ago— And doing so inaccessibly and in secret from the user?

busymom0 2y ago
As per the article, this isn't specific to iCloud: > This could be more innocent than it sounds. Computer data is never actually “deleted” until it’s overwritten with new 1s and 0s — operating systems simply cut off references to it. One user also said they saw a photo return even though they don’t sync their phone or use iCloud, implying the photos could be originating from on-device storage.
- jmholla 2y ago
  Except, the computer needs to know where to point to to read the data. So why are they keeping the index/inode around? Unless they're doing some unrequested data recovery to find these files?
  - friend_and_foe 2y ago
    Yup, exactly. If it's removed from the index it won't just show up again one day. This tells me that that innocuous explanation is not what's going on here.
- Intralexical 2y ago
  On the Reddit threads, there are also users reporting photos returning after being deleted from a different Apple device of a different type— Even when the original device did not have ICloud enabled. It's very odd. For it to be a local storage issue, it seems like IOS would have to be copying entire disk images across devices and accidentally doing file carving on freed resources. So I think ICloud is the most plausible technical explanation currently. At the same time, a cloud storage issue implies either malice or incompetence at a level that we currently only have indirect evidence of.
noiseinvacuum 2y ago

johnea 2y ago

I guess they weren't as "deleted" as people thought...

friend_and_foe 2y ago
This is the thing stating people in the face that many don't want to just observe and accept. You didn't sync something to icloud and somehow it's undeleted? It was synced to somewhere. This plainly points to a massive, industrial scale invasion of people's privacy that apple fanboys are not going to acknowledge.

loongloong 2y ago

excerpt from article : "And a person claimed in a later post that “around 300” of their old pictures, some of which were “revealing,” appeared on an iPad they’d wiped per Apple’s guidelines and sold to a friend." Is this true? Did a quick scan of the reddit posts referenced in the article and could not find this particular post. But it probably its my fault scanning too fast. More worrisome is, is the scenario possible? Assuming "wiped per Apple's guidelines" was indeed followed, isn't that technically not possible since the encryption keys were wiped?

jadamson 2y ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cspwh2/my_old_photos_appeared_on_an_ipad_i_sold/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cspwh2/my_old_photos_...
chatmasta 2y ago
Risks like this is why I don’t sell my old personal devices. A few hundred bucks is not worth the potential security compromise.