iOS 17.5 is officially released, bringing the latest security updates to all applicable iPhones. In addition to fixing some major security holes that Apple needs to address, the update also had an unexpected effect: It restored deleted photos.
The bug in iOS 17.5 has caused an uproar in the Apple community, with some expressing concerns about Apple's privacy statement and wondering whether the company's software will keep old photos even if you delete them.
The biggest concern here is the possibility of work photos accidentally reappearing unsafely: One Reddit user said that nudes that were deleted "a few years ago" (as well as some less dangerous photos) reappeared in their recent photos after updating their phones in the photo. Another Reddit user who encountered this issue said that you don't even need to be connected to iCloud. Locally stored photos are said to be coming back as well.
Unfortunately, there's no clear reason for what's happening here. Given that many of the photos are from several years ago, this is unlikely to be an issue with the recently deleted setting on the iPhone, photos on the iPhone are only retained for 30 days after deletion, just in case you accidentally delete a photo and need to recover it .
These reports may all be down to indexing issues, some kind of corruption in your photo library, or, for photos backed up online, sync issues between iCloud and your local device. Related to the latter point, Apple may have made a mistake when trying to fix sync issues reported by users in previous iOS 17 updates.
This explanation might be innocent, though: deleted files never really disappear from the device until they're overwritten, so the error might just redisplay them instead of making them available for overwriting. This could also explain a similar error another user encountered, where old voicemails came back.
Currently, if you've updated to iOS 17.5, there's not much you can do to avoid this error. It's not recommended to postpone the update, though, as it does address some security flaws that iPhone users will want addressed soon. Arguably, protecting yourself from Find My bugs is more important than preventing iOS from re-displaying your old deleted photos, as Find My bugs can let malicious apps track your current location regardless of that. How embarrassing that could be.
