iPhone owners say the latest iOS update is resurfacing deleted images

Apple appears to have a bug that’s dredging up data that iPhone owners
thought was gone. Some iPhone owners are reporting that, after updating
their phones to iOS 17.5, their deleted photos — some quite old — are
popping up again, according to a Reddit thread that MacRumors spotted.
iOS beta testers had the same complaints about the bug last week.

People reporting the apparent bug say that they’re seeing old photos
appear in their Recents album after Monday’s update. iOS does give
users the option to restore deleted photos, but after 30 days, they’re
supposed to be permanently removed.

The person who started the thread claimed that NSFW photos they had
deleted “years ago” were back on their phone. Another Reddit user said
that they saw photos from 2016 show up as new images but that they
didn’t think they’d ever deleted them. And a person claimed in a later
post that “around 300” of their old pictures, some of which were
“revealing,” appeared on an iPad they’d wiped per Apple’s guidelines
and sold to a friend.

There’s a chance it’s not specific to photos, either, as one person
posted on X that they saw old voicemails come back after the update.
Several beta testers said the same thing about earlier iOS 17 betas.
Whether the issue implies Apple is secretly holding onto old deleted
data or it’s just a quirk of how iOS 17.5 handles that data, it’s not
an ideal situation. Nobody wants to see their deleted nudes come back.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/15/24157284/apple-iphone-ios-17-5-update-deleted-photos-voicemails