The Latest IPhone Update Could Restore Your Old, Embarrassing Photos
iOS 17.5 is officially out , bringing the latest security updates to all applicable iPhones. In addition to fixing some serious security flaws that Apple should have addressed, the update also had an unintended effect: it brought back deleted photos.
This iOS 17.5 bug has caused an uproar in the Apple community, with some raising concerns about Apple’s privacy claims and wondering whether the company’s software retains old photos even after you delete them.
The big concern here is the possibility that unsafe for work photos will suddenly resurface again: one Reddit user says that nudes (and some less incriminating photos) that were removed “years ago” have reappeared in their recent images after an update phone. According to another Reddit user who encountered the problem , you don’t even need to connect to iCloud. It is assumed that locally stored photos will also return.
Unfortunately, there is no exact reason for what is happening here. Given that many photos were taken many years ago, this is unlikely to be an issue due to the recently removed settings on the iPhone that only keep photos for 30 days after deletion, in case you accidentally delete a photo and need to recover it.
It’s possible that all of these reports could be due to an indexing issue, some kind of corruption in the Photos library, or, in the case of online photo backups, a sync issue between iCloud and local devices. Regarding the last point, it’s possible that Apple made a mistake while trying to fix the sync issue that users reported in the previous iOS 17 update .
However, the explanation is likely innocent: deleted files will never disappear from the device until they are overwritten, so it’s possible that the bug is simply bringing them to the surface instead of leaving them available for overwriting. This may also explain a similar error another user encountered when old voicemails were returned .
At this point, there is little you can do to avoid this error if you have already updated to iOS 17.5. However, delaying the update is not recommended as it fixes some security flaws that iPhone users will want to fix as soon as possible. It may be more important to protect yourself from the Find My bug, which could allow a malicious app to track your current location, than to prevent iOS from re-displaying your old deleted photos—as awkward as that may be.