What’s going on

It is now known that this is not an isolated problem. At least a few users have come across this, mentioning it on Reddit. It all started with a single message posted on May 14, but then the comments quickly started showing people encountering the same problem.

The reappearance of old and long-deleted photos in users’ photo libraries raised the following logical question: Does the company keep records of deleted files on its servers? This would be very bad for privacy, which Apple has vigorously promoted for years.

One mistake can cause a range of problems of a different nature, ranging from deeply personal problems. This happened, for example, to the author of the original publication under the pseudonym Specialist-Fix8528.

I just finished the update. When I went to send photos while chatting with my partner, I saw that the last photos were pornographic materials we took years ago when we were living apart (covid or something). But what happens? Permanently deleted. Years ago but they magically came back.
– writer writes.

He immediately started looking through the gallery to see if there were any other old photos and found even more photos that he had taken years ago and then deleted. An interesting fact is that all recovered photos are marked as “Uploaded to iCloud”.

Another commenter says: “I have four photos from 2010 that appear to be the last photos uploaded to iCloud. I’ve deleted them multiple times.”

Another says he had a “random concert photo taken with a Canon camera” restored and looks like it was added today.

Reasons

It is not yet known what the problem is and how exactly deleted photos reappear on iPhone. Apple smartphones have a separate folder for deleted photos to be moved there, but this trash is automatically and permanently emptied 30 days after the files are deleted. The recovered files were instead deleted several years ago.

This could be due to an indexing error, problems with the photo library, or problems with syncing. Apple may have caused this issue while trying to fix a syncing bug found in iOS 17.3.

Apple has not made any statement about this problem, but it may fix it soon.