> I don’t understand why SSD’s or other storage hardware wouldn’t be formatted when you perform a “factory reset”. It seems such a quick, safe and good thing to

> I don’t understand why SSD’s or other storage hardware wouldn’t be formatted when you perform a “factory reset”. It seems such a quick, safe and good thing to do, no? Formatting can be fairly quick, but it doesn’t overwrite all data on a disk. Wiping definitely isn’t quick on “other storage hardware” and may not be that quick on SSDs. Luckily, as you indicate, there’s an easy solution: always encrypt all data on disk and, before reformatting, destroy the key. As to this issue: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Because of that, I don’t believe this claim yet. If it is true that photos resurface on a device that was factory reset, my money would not be on the photos surviving on the device, but on the photos getting redownloaded from iCloud.