Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'(wired.com)
wired.com
Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of 'deleted'
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-photo-bug-resurfaced-fix-icloud/
53 comments
It's impractical to delete files from long term storage. Think about a file saved to long term data storage tape. How do you delete that? It would take aeons.
Are you implying when you restore a new iPhone from a cloud backup, Apple hits its tape storage vaults?
iOS 17.5.1 has addressed the issue, attributing it to a database corruption issue not properly deleting it the first time
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 time. They absolutely must come clean here.
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 time. They absolutely must come clean here.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pressing 'delete' in Photos, by default, moves it to the Recently Deleted album, and uses a record in a database to schedule deletion for later.
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.
That seems like a massive invasion of privacy which I believe is illegal for them to do.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
There was one report and it's been deleted
I wouldn't assume anything "deleted" is ever truly deleted. Just a deleted_at property set and maybe the data eventually purged after many years.
When I click "Permanently delete" in the Apple photos app, doing anything other than permanently deleting it is nothing short of a lie
You’re in for a rude awakening then with most file systems then. Delete just means “unlink the pointer to it in the file system” for the vast majority of file systems. It might get deleted when it gets overwritten… sometime in the future maybe. I assume this is exactly what happened here.
Hasn't been that way in a decade. If you use nand flash there's a huge chance you're using trim which will periodically overwrite "not in use" blocks to avoid a write penalty later as writing to an empty page is much quicker.
However, "unlink the pointer" has been good enough for ages.
The data is effectively deleted short of an application having the privileges to read the underlying raw block device and having an understanding of the raw filesystem structures to be able to search though that unallocated, raw space and reconstruct file entries.
No application outside of special-purpose data recovery apps (and even then you'd need to run them with elevated privileges) would have any reason to be capable of this, so in practice a deleted file means it is deleted from the perspective of the vast majority of applications.
Similarly, SSD TRIM is also irrelevant - TRIM'med space is hidden from the host. Sure, an intentional tool exploiting some undocumented vendor command or side-channel could probably recover it but again you'd have to do this intentionally.
The data is effectively deleted short of an application having the privileges to read the underlying raw block device and having an understanding of the raw filesystem structures to be able to search though that unallocated, raw space and reconstruct file entries.
No application outside of special-purpose data recovery apps (and even then you'd need to run them with elevated privileges) would have any reason to be capable of this, so in practice a deleted file means it is deleted from the perspective of the vast majority of applications.
Similarly, SSD TRIM is also irrelevant - TRIM'med space is hidden from the host. Sure, an intentional tool exploiting some undocumented vendor command or side-channel could probably recover it but again you'd have to do this intentionally.
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
> 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.”
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?
iCloud is a pile of crap with eventual consistency everywhere, including some really extreme interpretations of "eventual": I've had deleted "favorite places" on Maps persist for years. Deleting them would hide them from the local device, yet restoring a brand new device would bring them back.
The whole thing feels like it's running on duct tape, wishful thinking and a large chunk of non-technical users that would blame themselves rather than the shitty tech when weird things like this happen.
The whole thing feels like it's running on duct tape, wishful thinking and a large chunk of non-technical users that would blame themselves rather than the shitty tech when weird things like this happen.
this, i always tell my junior devs that rm -rf is just flipping a flag and not to worry so much.
So, it seems like this is legit now? Last I checked it was in the "probably legit but unconfirmed" realm.
Apple needs to explain exactly what happened and how they plan to prevent it exactly now. They should be fined for storing photos after someone permanently deletes them. They should be forced to allow transparent access to the file system like on Android. This should be all over national TV.
This is bad. Really really bad.
Apple needs to explain exactly what happened and how they plan to prevent it exactly now. They should be fined for storing photos after someone permanently deletes them. They should be forced to allow transparent access to the file system like on Android. This should be all over national TV.
This is bad. Really really bad.
It is definitely legit because Apple issued a fix (https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24160983/apple-iphone-ipa...). So they’ve acknowledged the behavior but not explained why it happened or confirmed that deleted now really means deleted.
[deleted]
I can't believe news about this is as quiet as it is. This should be on national television, like cambridge analytica (which honestly was probably not nearly as bad as this)
There is a reasonable chance that it's a bug happening locally. It would still be really bad, but that would rule out gov. intervention theories, iCloud keeping everything even when the user deletes it, and would also rule out wide spread sharing of these photos.
If it's limited to local resurrection of the deleted photos, I'd see it as way smaller than what we had with CA.
If it's limited to local resurrection of the deleted photos, I'd see it as way smaller than what we had with CA.
How about the gov comes to you and tells you that you must keep all deleted photos on the device and that you must not tell anyone about this request.
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.
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.
The devices have full-disk encryption. That data is not recoverable without the passcode. If it’s been wiped it’s not recoverable.
That is still really bad, what?
It's fairly bad in terms of triaging a software bug. But it's not particularly bad in terms of newsworthiness.
An android phone running ext3/4 likely doesn't delete the file when you press delete either.
I mean doesn't the file system simply mark a sector as "writeable" until something gets marked on it?
I'm more impressed that these areas of flash didn't get copied over with other data.
I'm more impressed that these areas of flash didn't get copied over with other data.
It happens all of the time, which is how data recovery tools work on 'deleted' data. But I doubt this particular instance was a file system bug. Probably a bug in the 30-day delete scheduling that happens by default in the Recently Deleted album in Photos.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40370078
If the photo never leaves the device this seems more like a feature dedicated to law enforcement whether that is for democratic or dictatorship type of governemnt forms. There still is a speck of privacy, the device itself. If LE cannot get hold of it then it’s undiscoverable. However if any photo leaves the device without any cloud settings on we’re talking about a complete lack of privacy.
Discussion on Reddit before it was removed by r/ios mods:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cryayx/latest_ios_upd...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cryayx/latest_ios_upd...
Archive before deletion: https://web.archive.org/web/20240518030444/https://old.reddi...
Why did the mods remove it? I hate that they have such insane censorship powers on Reddit, especially when many of the top subreddits are controlled by a small group of them.
Reddit is a joke now. It’s all either bots or mod-curated narratives.
because even devoted sycophants can't rationalize it away with the usual mental gymnastics.
[deleted]
Guess I'll get to see all those screenshots of my lock screen one last time.
[deleted]