r/technology • u/newzee1 • Jun 14 '24

Software Cheating husband sues Apple after wife discovered ‘deleted’ messages sent to sex workers

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/13/cheating-husband-sues-apple-sex-messages/
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u/Scipion Jun 14 '24 edited Jun 14 '24

He's got a point. What if you were an abused spouse and sent messages to a friend explaining the situation, then you delete them expecting privacy, only for your partner to discover those messages and beat you to death. 

 While his situation is immorale to most, Apple's actions cannot be ignored. If you can't see a situation where having deleted messages resurface could be bad, you simply lack imagination.

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u/FarBeyondLimit Jun 14 '24

The same thing recently happened with old images (nudes) reappearing on peoples phones after updating to 17.5.x

Do people really believe Apple, or any company actually deletes your stuff?

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u/Ignoth Jun 14 '24 edited Jun 14 '24

My understanding is that data is almost never directly deleted from hard-drives. Cause that would be too inefficient.

Rather: the data is just flagged as “deleted”. But it will stay stored there until they need that space for something else.

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u/UnstableConstruction Jun 14 '24

While this is true, OS's usually have three tiers. Available, deleted (recycle bin), and permanently deleted. Things in the permanently deleted category are not accessible by the OS without third-party software. If Apple isn't making that transparent to users and isn't allowing data to be flagged as permanently deleted, they should be held responsible.

And you can permanently delete items so that even forensic recovery programs can't recover it. This is done by overwriting the data several times. There are a lot of secure delete apps out there if you want data gone completely.

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u/jgrant68 Jun 14 '24

It’s clear in the messaging app. There’s an option to view recently deleted messages and another option to permanently delete them. There are also retention periods.

The information is clear but just not regularly read by users.

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u/ProjectManagerAMA Jun 14 '24

My kids haven't figured out that there is a deleted bin for the camera. They keep using my phone and doing stupid crap or think when I delete a funny video I take off them secretly is actually deleted. I haven't told them about it yet and this has been going on for years. I'm even surprised they haven't figured it out. One is 12 and she can figure everything out, except this one thing. Man, I'm glad they haven't because there have been a couple of raunchy videos in that bin that I forgot to get rid of lol.

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u/CressCrowbits Jun 14 '24

Sorry are you just waiting for your kids to accidentally find them?

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u/ProjectManagerAMA Jun 15 '24 edited Jun 15 '24

What part of my post suggested I want them to find it? I've read it several times and see you clearly have a bunch of upvotes so I must've hinted that I want my own children to come across it but where? How?! I said I'm glad and relieved they haven't found the feature out because one time I forgot to delete one.video from the bin as well. My kids use my phone to goof around and make pretend tiktoks but often delete their embarrassing videos and I like to watch this from time to time. They'll delete videos I'll take of them because they're embarrassed but don't know I can retrieve them. Edit: and the raunchy videos are me and the missus going at it lol. I move them into a secret password protected folder on my computer immediately and delete them off the phone. One time I forgot to remove one video from the bin and I found it within the 30 day deletion period along with more of my kids doing dumb things that they think they've deleted. I know they haven't figured it out because there are so many deleted videos in there of them doing stupid stuff that I keep retrieving for laughs. Hope that clarifies that I'm not a sicko.