If we had to compile a list of our worst nightmares, having your old, long deleted nudes randomly show up on your phone would probably be near the top of the list. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening to some iPhone users who upgraded to the latest version of iOS, 17.5.
According to this Reddit thread (via MacRumors), some iPhone and iPad users are seeing old, permanently deleted photos show up among their new pics. Worse, some of these photos were taken and deleted years ago, no longer gone for good.
“Just completed the update. When in conversation with my partner, I went to send a picture and saw that the latest pictures were nsfw material we’d made years ago when we were living apart (covid etc). But WTF. It was permanently deleted. Years ago but magically it’s back?? I checked my iPad and it also has pictures (some art work I did years ago). I feel so uncomfortable. Anyone else got this issue? I mean with pictures coming back post update,” wrote one Redditor.
“Same here. I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly,” wrote another.”
On iOS, deleted photos can be accessed for 30 days after deletion, after which they should be permanently removed from the user’s devices and the cloud.
This is concerning for several reasons. Besides the obvious — you don’t want the photos you’ve deleted to ever show up anywhere again — the fact that these photos even exist somewhere makes you wonder what other deleted materials may be lurking in the cloud or on your device(s).
The bug seems to be present in the latest iOS 17.5 version, and MacRumors pointed out that some users reported a similar bug in the iOS 17.5 beta. It’s unclear how widespread the issue is; we’ve contacted Apple about it and will update this article when we hear back.
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