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iPhone owners say the latest iOS update is resurfacing deleted nudes
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Nothing sinister, we just don't delete what we say we delete. Instead we keep it in your profile to feed the algorithms and set the "deleted" flag to make you think it's gone.
I mean, to be completely fair, that's how data storage works.
We cannot really just make data disappear, so we let it get overwritten instead
But clearly the data is not overwritten and this was intentional. How do I know? Because that would amount to a massive amount of data, if it was de to a bug in Apple software or underlying filesystems, it would be detected in monitoring systems "Hey, we're using 10x the data we should be, maybe we should look into it".
The mistake was in the flag code that was supposed to fool us.
no when I say "overwritten" I mean that the area is set as deleted in the filesystem and the next time something writes to that area the data that was there before is disregarded.
A single overwrite might not be enough to defeat physical forensics because shadows of the old data persist in how the new data is stored. Also when it comes to SSDs you might be waiting a long time for the data to get overwritten as the drive will wear-level its erm sectors (what are those things called with SSDs?).
They are called cells IIRC
So are you saying that they suffered from a filesystem bug that caused deletion failure? I'd imagine they use standard filesystems on their backend, I haven't heard about any bugs like this.
If you ask me, what's more likely, that a company known for shitty behavior lies about deleting files so they can continue to use that information to profit, -- OR -- that they are experiencing a filesystem bug on their backend, I'll choose the former.
no I don't believe a damn word of what apple's gonna say on this, I just wanted to get the message out there that generally file deletion works by allowing data to be overwritten, so if the images are local this could very well just be that either it's showing data that hasn't been overwritten yet or it accidentally brought things out of the "recently deleted" depending on how long ago it was deleted.
Undeleting nudes
That’s iPhone
Seriously: I don’t think the cost benefit is there to intentionally make a maneuver like this. Any crap they pull needs to have a perfectly proper explanation, with our agreement to a specific term buried somewhere in their policies. Can only imagine how much money they blew throwing these billboards up all over the San Francisco Bay area. We have to buy Apple over Google for ostensible privacy gains, and Apple has to lock us in to their walled gardens to make up for their comparatively smaller ad/data business.
This post assumes Apple is aethical (that’s like amoral but for ethics right?) but still a self-interested economic actor. They can’t let short-term greed get in the way of long-term greed!
You might be right
lol