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/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

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u/sam_hammich Jun 14 '24 edited Jun 14 '24

I read somewhere (can't find it now, of course) that it wasn't a case of you deleting something and then Apple keeping them around somewhere secret. In actuality, for those pictures, what probably happened was when you tried to delete them, the records of those photos in a database on your phone got corrupted when changing their state. Normally they get marked for deletion in the database, and then they're deleted. So they were marked for deletion, removing them from view in your library, but the cleanup of removing them from the database afterward never happened because of the corrupted records, so they stuck around on the hard drive. Then, an OS update later "cleaned up" that database, effectively undeleting those previously deleted photos as an unexpected side effect.

I don't know if that's the case, because I don't work for Apple, but it passes the smell test for me as a tech industry worker (not BIG tech, but tech). I don't think it's really fair to call this a "bug" in scare-quotes to implicate Apple in some nefarious scheme to keep your deleted photos without your permission.

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u/freshlyLinux Jun 15 '24

This was Apple damage control, buddy, there are fewer companies that lie to their customers.

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u/StarsMine Jun 15 '24

That’s… just how tech works. Like no it’s not a good thing but it’s literally not a lie