And a person claimed in a later post that “around 300” of their old pictures, some of which were “revealing,” appeared on an iPad they’d wiped per Apple’s guidelines and sold to a friend.
How would that even work? Wiping a device resets the encryption keys, doesn’t it?
It actually doesn’t seem possible as there are too many systems that need to fail for it be true. The encryption key, access to another Apple ID and Photos having access to it all.
We are finding out that it’s not the images that are restored, but the thumbnails. Which is why the images are low quality when opened. The original photos are gone but the thumbnails still survive on Apple’s servers. Likely just cached. Which of course only applies to those logged into their accounts, not on other wiped devices.
How would that even work? Wiping a device resets the encryption keys, doesn’t it?
And the images are tied to an Apple ID.
So somehow the fully factory reset iPad accidentally logged in to the old Apple ID and merged deleted photos to the new Apple ID
Both seem equally improbable.
It actually doesn’t seem possible as there are too many systems that need to fail for it be true. The encryption key, access to another Apple ID and Photos having access to it all.
We are finding out that it’s not the images that are restored, but the thumbnails. Which is why the images are low quality when opened. The original photos are gone but the thumbnails still survive on Apple’s servers. Likely just cached. Which of course only applies to those logged into their accounts, not on other wiped devices.
It sounds like these aren’t still on the device somewhere, but re-downloaded from iCloud.
So presumably the device ID is somehow being used to incorrectly “authenticate” to iCloud and old images are being restored.
This definitely raises some major concerns about how iCloud authentication works.