• voxel
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      1 month ago

      probably they just implemented a trash can system in an extremely idiotic way like Samsung.

    • @Nogami
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      71 month ago

      I was going to reply with a long explanation, but since you were so emphatic about it I decided not to. You emphatically know more about it than us I guess?

      But you say “on iPhones”, not on the cloud services they connect to.

      Just sounds like a cloud sync error to me, boring but it happens. I don’t have any issues but I also have all cloud photo services disabled.

      • @abhibeckert
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        1 month ago

        Some people claim they don’t have cloud sync enabled and also a lot of the photos were deleted several years ago… on different physical hardware hardware (but somehow carried forward through device transfers).

        • @[email protected]
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          118 days ago

          Could you be more specific on what you’re talking about? I found the “Apple Platform Security” document, is that what you mean?

          • @[email protected]
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            18 days ago

            Yes, that’s the successor document. You can also use the old iPhone 4 era iOS security guide, the file system details are not a fast moving target. The addition of the Secure Enclave changes things a bit.

            Anyway, the idea is that data only hits disk encrypted with a per-file key that is stored with the directory information. When you delete a file, the key is obliterated, rendering the deleted data unrecoverable from block storage. The explanation proffered by the journalist that data isn’t really deleted when you delete it from disk, doesn’t hold. Because it is. Or at least the key to it.

            A more likely explanation is spare copies either in the cloud or on the device not getting cleaned up. But deleted files on iOS are proper gone.

            • @[email protected]
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              118 days ago

              APFS’s per-file keys are super cool, I didn’t realize they were doing that. But do we know if the photos app is actually using the filesystem for storage? I don’t think photos show up in the files app, for instance.

              • @[email protected]
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                218 days ago

                They are on the file system in /private/var/mobile/Media, and no, they are not accessible using the file app. Apple, what can you do ;)

  • @abhibeckert
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    1 month ago

    Putting my developer hat on and reading various reports - this smells like Apple had a really bad data loss bug which they quietly fixed by attempting to automatically recover lost photos from some corner of the database that still might have the data. Such as the thumbnail database or a cache.

    Backups people. Make sure you have good backups and for your most precious photos not just digital ones - print them. And send a physical copy to your grandparents as a gift - they’ll love it and it will be one more place you can recover that photo of your kid’s birthday if you ever need to

    And if you don’t want something in a photo… don’t take the photo.

    • @[email protected]
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      129 days ago

      Backing this stuff up is really difficult. The vast majority of macs don’t have enough storage to keep everything local. If you put it on an external drive then it disables some features.

      My solution is to keep an old Mac as a backup device that keeps all the files local and backs them up. But that’s far more than most people are prepared to do.

  • @[email protected]
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    -61 month ago

    Probably nothing sinister lol they’re archiving everything every iPhone user has ever had on their device even if they don’t sync and some bug accidentally pulled back the curtain for a minute.