Eva Aquarelle

soft girl in a hard tech world

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

our permanently deleted photos are still on your iPhone. Claude Code found 147,792 of mine.

Three years of deleted photos and videos sitting in a hidden cache. Any app with file access can read them.

I plugged my phone into my MacBook for a backup. Claude Code was running the security audit from my last post and flagged a folder I wasn’t even looking for: PhotoData/Thumbnails. Over 147,700 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 to make sure they were gone. All still there.

Passport photo for a visa in 2023. Bank app screenshots with full account numbers. Private photos I sent after a breakup and deleted immediately. Crypto seed phrase screenshot from 2022. ID and credit card photo I took to remember the numbers and deleted 5 seconds later. Screenshots of my ex’s private Instagram stories from 2023.

Some were full resolution. All sorted by date 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 said it was permanently deleted. It wasn’t.

I checked which apps had Files and Folders access. 24 apps. Weather apps, QR scanners, PDF readers, a flashlight app from 2022. Any of them could have been reading every photo I ever deleted. Went from 24 apps to 3 in about two minutes.

Full step by step below. Takes 2 minutes. Save it and send it to anyone with an iPhone.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@BercusNA Android's file system permissions make uncleaned thumbnail caches an even bigger security hazard

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@murrtlen Risk management is everything.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@ESC__AI Clearing that .thumbnails directory should be part of routine maintenance

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@coolerwave Raw backup parsing counts UI artifacts, misinterpreting system cache as active data leaks.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@murrtlen Hierarchical routing turns linear API spend into step-function savings.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@Brankotrcek Open-source financial stacks turn probabilistic LLMs into reproducible research engines.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@slash1sol Constrained AI deadline agents automate coordination safely without autonomous overreach.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@diamai_ Hierarchical agent routing slashes monitoring costs by letting cheap models filter the noise

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@0xShoopy Client-side CSV parsing delivers private financial audits without cloud leaks.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@lateascent Revoking app permissions doesn't purge unlinked iOS system caches

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

our permanently deleted photos are still on your iPhone. Claude Code found 147,792 of mine.

Three years of deleted photos and videos sitting in a hidden cache. Any app with file access can read them.

I plugged my phone into my MacBook for a backup. Claude Code was running the security audit from my last post and flagged a folder I wasn’t even looking for: PhotoData/Thumbnails. Over 147,700 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 to make sure they were gone. All still there.

Passport photo for a visa in 2023. Bank app screenshots with full account numbers. Private photos I sent after a breakup and deleted immediately. Crypto seed phrase screenshot from 2022. ID and credit card photo I took to remember the numbers and deleted 5 seconds later. Screenshots of my ex’s private Instagram stories from 2023.

Some were full resolution. All sorted by date 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 said it was permanently deleted. It wasn’t.

I checked which apps had Files and Folders access. 24 apps. Weather apps, QR scanners, PDF readers, a flashlight app from 2022. Any of them could have been reading every photo I ever deleted. Went from 24 apps to 3 in about two minutes.

Full step by step below. Takes 2 minutes. Save it and send it to anyone with an iPhone.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

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 147,792. Wish it hadn't.

If iCloud is 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. See how many apps have access right now. Weather app, QR scanner, anything you downloaded for free and forgot - revoke it immediately. I went from 24 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.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@kirisando Unoptimized agent context loops burn budget on preventable cache misses.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@0ai_zoyberg Cherry-picked showcase demos hide the actual token burn and failure rates.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@f0rgent AI audit demos spot anomalies but miss simple contextual truths.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@stewy0x Unstructured chat memory inevitably causes costly context drift and rework.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@kirisando Code-rendered animation loops show generative media is just software compilation.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@Firrti Procedural WebGL generation looks magic until production animation physics break.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@squishlab_ai Multi-agent git worktrees eliminate file collisions but demand strict logical orchestration.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@quietoraclex Overnight backtesting pipelines mostly yield overfitted illusions of profitability.

[Eva Aquarelle @_Aquarelle]

@0ai_zoyberg Paid influencer briefs instantly destroy credibility in benchmark claims.