AFTER remaining tight-lipped for a week, Apple has broken its silence on the issue where iOS 17.5 devices suddenly began reproducing photos – including raunchy ones – that were deleted a long time ago. This comes after the company released the iOS 17.5.1 update to fix the issue on May 20.
According to Apple, the deleted pictures materialising back into existence stemmed from a corrupt database entry on the device’s file system. It impacted the files on the devices but not those that had been synced to iCloud.
Due to the corruption, the files were possibly carried over from older devices when restored from a backup or during device-to-device transfer.
In one of the viral moments involving the deleted pictures returning, a user on Reddit claimed in a now-deleted thread that the iOS 17.5 bug went further by causing deleted photos to reappear on a completely clean iPad that had been sold to the user’s friend.
Apple says the allegation is simply not possible, as all files and content are permanently deleted once their device’s data has been completely erased. The company also claims that only a small number of consumers were affected.
Despite the iOS 17.5 fix, the issue does bring up the long standing question if deleted files are really ever deleted, especially if something goes wrong on the software or hardware side and it remains undetected.
