Russian software company ElcomSoft has made an interesting discovery about an iCloud feature. iCloud is Apple’s cloud synchronization service and is used as the backbone of all of their services. iCloud handles all aspects of Apple devices: emails, profiles, and especially data synch. By default, iCloud keeps the elements we delete for 30 days, then removes them for good: but occasionally it happens that things do not go as planned, and deleted things remains more than due.
It seems, however, that ElcomSoft enjoys following Apple so close: in 2016 discovered that it was quite easy to decrypt an iPhone backup made through iTunes and considered protected. Earlier this year, ElcomSoft found that even if we deleted Safari’s history, it was not really gone (although the issue was a bit more complex than that). Now ElcomSoft has found that it’s possible to regain access to iCloud notes moved to the “Recently Deleted” folder that should disappear definitively after 30 days. Using their Phone Breaker software they could recover notes that should have been deleted, but it depends on single users: some accounts have recovered more than others.
Apple has not yet commented on what happened, but in the previous cases, it has always responded swiftly. Probably in the next few weeks will take some action to improve this little privacy flaw.