Claude Code found 145,763 photos I permanently deleted from my iPhone. Three years of deleted photos and videos still sitting in a hidden cache. Any app with file access can read them. I plugged my iPhone into my MacBook to run a backup. Claude Code was doing the security... audit from my last post and flagged a directory I wasn't even looking for. PhotoData/Thumbnails. Over 146,000 files. Photos, videos, screenshots. Every single one was something I deleted. Photos from 2023, 2024 and 2025. The ones I deleted the second after taking them. The ones I cleared from Recently Deleted. The ones I deleted three separate times because I wanted to be sure they were gone. All still there. Passport photo I took for a visa application in 2023. Screenshots of my bank app with full account numbers visible. Private photos I sent someone and immediately deleted after a breakup. Screenshot of my crypto seed phrase I took temporarily in 2022. Photo of my ID and credit card I took to remember the numbers and deleted 5 seconds later. Screenshots of my ex's private Instagram stories I saved and permanently deleted in 2023. Some were full resolution. All organized by date going back to 2021. When you delete a photo on iPhone, iOS removes it from your camera roll and Recently Deleted. It keeps a compressed copy in a Spotlight search index cache so your phone can find things when you search. Apple never clears it. Not after 30 days. Not after a year. Never. They told you it was permanently deleted. It wasn't. I checked which apps on my phone had Files and Folders access. 23 apps. Weather apps. QR code scanners. PDF readers. A flashlight app I downloaded in 2022. Any one of them could have been reading every photo I ever deleted this entire time. Went from 23 apps to 3 in about two minutes. Full step by step below. Takes 2 minutes. Save it so you don't lose it and send it to anyone with an iPhone.show more

Here's the prompt I used: "scan this iPhone backup for deleted photo caches, thumbnail databases, and any image files that persist after user deletion. list every directory containing photos that don't appear in the active camera roll. show total file count, date range, and which apps currently have read access to these directories. read only, change nothing." Plug your iPhone into your Mac. Open Finder. Click Trust. Run a backup. Paste that into Claude Code. Takes 2 minutes. Mine came back with 145,763. I really wish it hadn't. If you have iCloud on, this cache syncs to every Apple device on your account. I checked my iPad after finding it on my phone. Same cache. Same deleted photos. Same 3 years of files I thought were gone. Go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Files & Folders. Look at how many apps have access right now. Weather app, QR scanner, anything you downloaded for free and forgot about — revoke it immediately. I went from 23 apps to 3 in two minutes. Your permanently deleted nudes from 2022 are sitting on the iPad your little brother uses. Check it today. Not tomorrow.

"claude code found deleted images!" no the fuck it didnt it would need kernel+SPTM bypass which is super hard to do and is already against claude TOS the video in question is just a demo of a ios jailbreak and claude cannot access your iphone this is just clickbait and a botfarm

no :(

The real lesson here: never screenshot your seed phrase. Not even "temporarily."

100%, storing a seed phrase in digital format is asking for trouble

That’s a solid find. The fact that Spotlight’s thumbnail cache keeps years of “deleted” photos (including seed phrases and IDs) even after Recently Deleted is cleared is a real privacy issue. One important caveat though: the demo is on a jailbroken device with root SSH. On a stock, non-jailbroken iPhone, third-party apps generally can’t freely read that directory. Still worth auditing “Files and Folders” permissions and being careful what you screenshot.

Jailbreaks merely expose the persistent ghost data that operating systems pretend they deleted.

Apple: We care about your privacy. Also Apple: Keeps a permanent, unencrypted cache of your deleted nudes and bank details for years.

Ce n’est pas une “découverte” de Claude Code, et ce n’est pas nouveau. Depuis des années, des scripts Python de quelques dizaines de lignes font exactement la même chose sur un backup iPhone non chiffré (Finder/iTunes). Ils ouvrent simplement Manifest.db (SQLite), listent les fichiers dont le relativePath contient PhotoData/Thumbnails, DCIM ou Photos.sqlite, puis extraient les fichiers par leur hash (fileID). On peut aussi interroger la table ZASSET de Photos.sqlite pour voir les éléments marqués ZTRASHEDSTATE = 1 (Récemment supprimés). Des outils et scripts open-source existent depuis longtemps pour ça. Concernant le système de stockage : sur un SSD ou la mémoire flash NAND d’un iPhone (APFS), “supprimer” un fichier ne fait en général que retirer le pointeur / l’adresse logique dans les métadonnées du système de fichiers (l’inode ou l’entrée qui dit “ce nom pointe vers ces blocs”). Les données brutes restent physiquement jusqu’à ce que le TRIM et le garbage collection du contrôleur effacent réellement les pages. Pour les photos, iOS fait en plus un traitement spécifique : la suppression UI déplace d’abord vers “Récemment supprimés” (30 jours), puis purge le fichier principal dans DCIM et met à jour la base. Mais des miniatures compressées et des caches (PhotoData/Thumbnails, métadonnées Spotlight, etc.) sont gérés séparément pour la recherche et l’affichage rapide, donc ils peuvent subsister un moment même après la purge “définitive”. Ce n’est pas un bug caché magique, c’est le fonctionnement normal des caches + du système de fichiers sur flash. En résumé : Claude a juste automatisé des commandes sqlite3 + extraction de backup que n’importe qui pouvait écrire en Python depuis des années. La partie “données encore présentes” vient surtout des caches système et du fait que la suppression marque d’abord les blocs comme libres plutôt que de les zéroer immédiatement.

AI SLOP POST Delete your account you retarded liar

Thumbnails in PhotoData can linger after deletion (known forensics issue, shows up in backups). But random apps with “Files and Folders” permission can’t freely read that system cache on a normal iPhone sandboxing blocks it. The access claim is the main exaggeration.

A screenshot of a seed phrase sitting in a cache for three years is the most terrifying line on this whole site

Was he able to get these photos back?

The real lesson here isn’t about one cache folder. It’s that “deleted” almost never means gone Seed phrases, ID photos and bank screenshots should never touch your camera roll in the first place Small correction though: iOS apps are sandboxed, a flashlight app can’t read your system photo data. Worth auditing permissions anyway

What’s the path ? Where in the backup are the photos sitting in

They sit inside Media/PhotoData/Thumbnails within the backup system files

The fact that a 2022 flashlight app had access to my deleted passport photos and crypto seed phrases is genuinely terrifying. Deleting the Recently Deleted folder means nothing if there's a hidden cache.

Silent shadow caches render "delete" buttons utterly useless.

Can it mass delete all my texts to thousands of different people? I’m too lazy to do it manually. Oh, and can it. Grab all of my photos and put them somewhere else so I don’t have to keep paying for iCloud?

Claude Code can't natively auto-delete iPhone iMessages or manage iCloud storage transfers directly

that kind of hidden cache could lead to serious privacy risks for users

Can i do it with my pc or windows laptop?

Fake

What about android

On Android, check DCIM/.thumbnails and app caches for leftover deleted photos.

YA ES HORA QUE EMPECEMOS A HACER NUESTROS PROPIOS SISTEMAS OPERATIVOS PARA NUESTROS CELULARES

Can you do this from iPhone to windows

Yes, you can backup on Windows using iTunes or Apple Devices and unpack it.

What’s that process look like

Interesting find. Curious what Apple says about it. Did you report it to them?

Wild find. One question though: was that folder visible from the phone itself, or only inside the backup on your Mac? Feels like those are two very different risks, and it changes what people should actually lock down.

@grok is this real?

f*ck I've just checked my own devices. i can't believe the result

I'd want to see whether those files are actually recoverable originals or cached thumbnails before concluding that permanently deleted photos are still sitting there.

awesome

Superb feature, bro! 🔥

this is terrifying if true

our anonimity is not proved until we check it by ourselves

Hey @grok, fact check this post.

I did the same today with my phone and was surprised with old photos and such opportunity.

The illusion of deletion collapses the moment you inspect raw storage.

now i'm wondering what else my iphone is keeping without me knowing

Makes you wonder what else is hiding in system caches.

Right, this far from correct and only meant to cause a stir when in-fact nothing is going on. I also just ran the exact same prompt with a unencrypted backup and this is the answer I got: I found no front-camera photos or videos outside the Photos library in this backup. The backup isn’t encrypted, so I could read every one of the ~114,000 non-Photos files with exiftool. Nothing was modified, since I worked from a copy of Manifest.db. Only 480 files still have camera metadata, and all of them are back camera: 479 document scans in Scanner Pro (iPhone 13, 14 and 17 Pro Max, 2022 to 2026) and one image in Notes from July 2022. The catch is WhatsApp. It holds about 13,400 images and videos (10.9k JPEG, 1.5k PNG, 567 MP4), but WhatsApp strips camera metadata when it sends or saves media, so any selfies in there can’t be found this way. Messages has only 33 media files in the backup, which probably means your attachments sit in iCloud. If you want, I can run on-device face detection over the WhatsApp media to flag likely selfies.