-
@ Lux
2024-05-25 14:26:43Recently, Apple released iOS 17.5. Almost immediately, people began taking to social media to discuss an oddity they began witnessing. Seemingly, "zombie" photos were resurfacing in people's recent albums gallery. Some photos were deleted many years ago. What the hell happened?
Apple would not immediately offer comment on the issue. Of course, that's to be expected as they wouldn't want to self-incriminate while they investigate. Fortunately, they released a hotfix with iOS 17.5.1 released a few days later.
However, Apple remained mum about what caused the issue and why photos people had deleted many years ago and from older devices started to resurface.
Apple confirmed to 9to5mac that iCloud Photos is not to be blamed for this. Instead, it all boils down to the corrupt database entry that existed on the device’s file system itself.
According to Apple, the photos that were not fully deleted from a user’s device were not synced to iCloud Photos. Those files were only on the device itself. However, the files could have persisted from one device to another when restoring from a backup, performing a device-to-device transfer, or restoring from an iCloud Backup but not using iCloud Photos.
This strange issue highlights at least two focal points regarding deleting photos on an iOS device. First, it emphasizes that Apple has, at some point, not seemed to delete photos (perhaps media as a whole?) in a secure method where it writes over them to make them irrecoverable.
Secondly, it's recommended that persistent device-to-device transfers from iCloud backups be avoided. Rather, new devices should be set up as exactly that—a new device. This will not only help rid the new device of bloat but also ensure that no previously deleted data fragments are transferred.
Apple further claims, that after a device has been completely erased using the steps below, all files and content are permanently deleted:
- Open “Settings”
- Choose “General”
- Choose “Transfer or Reset”
- Choose “Erase All Content and Settings”
Following these steps, apparently everything is permanently deleted from the user’s device and there is no chance of old photos resurfacing down the line.