Photos I did not take appear in my camera roll

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Level 1

26 points

Photos I did not take appear in my camera roll

This has happened twice to me this week. The first incident was last Thursday, I was looking through my camera roll (not photostream) and saw three pictures that I did not take. They were photos saved from the internet, as one of them was a 9gag meme. I was at the office that time so I guessed one of my officemates fooled around with my phone maybe. I didn't think anything of it. Then this morning, I woke up and found two more pictures on my camera roll that I didn't take. One photo was a picture of a windows desktop, which is weird because there aren't any windows computers in my household. Plus, I did not go out last night or anything, so my phone was with me the whole time. This is starting to worry me because this may be a security issue. Can a someone hack into my phone remotely and save photos into my camera roll? It's either that or I have a trigger happy alter-ego...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.1.1

Posted on Sep 8, 2012 8:06 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Tashapea

Level 1

4 points

Jan 13, 2017 8:15 AM in response to RenPiano86

This happened to me as well, turns out someone sent me a photo in my WhatsApp app, and it automatically saved to my camera roll. But it freaked me out until I figured out what was going on! I would check any photo/messenger apps to see if it came from there

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Answer 2

Oct 18, 2012 4:14 AM in response to RenPiano86

Hmmm

m. I use whatsapp too. Maybe I need to check groups to see if that's the source. I thought the pics only transferred to camera roll if viewed? If the bearded lady with Pom poms steal my identity, do I have to assume his/hers ?

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Answer 3

Oct 17, 2012 8:40 PM in response to RenPiano86

You're not paranoid, I just noticed this is happening to me too. No chance someone has taken the phone or is playing a gag. There are several weird random images in my camera roll that I didn't shoot or download from anywhere--a shot of Navy people posing together, screen shots from a Canada government website, "funny" graphics like people would post on their facebook wall, gross wrinkly old lady that looks like the crypt keeper, bearded woman with pom poms on her hat. This is no joke. What's up with this??

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Answer 4

RenPiano86 Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 17, 2012 8:56 PM in response to wulfshade

FINALLY somebody having the same problem as mine. Thank you for sharing that, made me feel so much saner! 😝 It recently happened to me again, but I noticed that the photos came from a group chat on the WhatsApp app i have. Apparently when I open the conversation, some of the photos get saved to my camera roll. But still, not all the random photos came from WhatsApp. There are still some photos that just "magically" appear.

I really hope some explanation can be made. I'm sure we're not the only two with this problem.

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Answer 5

justodd

Level 1

4 points

Nov 12, 2016 10:38 AM in response to Peter Jorgensen

My wife was having this happen on her phone. A lot of them every day too. Reading through this thread led me to ask her to see if any of the photo's appearing in her camera roll could be found in any of her apps. Culprit was whatsapp - thanks RenPiano!

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Answer 6

RenPiano86 Author

Level 1

26 points

Sep 9, 2012 6:35 AM in response to ckuan

Yep, I'm aware that pics are saved into the camera roll from the internet etc. It's just that the photos that "appeared" are so random, definitely not photos I'd want to save for future reference or whatever. But maybe you're right, I could be paranoid.

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Answer 7

Apr 15, 2017 9:30 AM in response to RenPiano86

The same thing just happened to me this morning for the first time. I read this, checked What's App and sure enough that was it. A friend moving here from Europe had sent via What'sApp a video of the truck driving away with all their stuff and that came onto my photo roll! Thanks to everyone for solving the mystery.

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Answer 8

ckuan

Level 10

120,932 points

Sep 8, 2012 8:15 PM in response to RenPiano86

Don't be paranoid 😉, unless your iPhone was hacked or jailbroken you have nothing to worry about.

Note: Pics from the Internet, e-mail attachment, or mms are saved in your Camera Roll.

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Answer 9

Sep 23, 2016 6:39 AM in response to RenPiano86

I see that this thread is quite old but Aan unrecognized photo appeared in my wife's camera roll in the midst of a bunch of photos she took. it is of a man and woman on a couch with the woman's head on his lap. They are fully clothed. The XMP file related to this photo contains:

<?xpacket begin='' id=''?>

<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x='adobe:ns:meta/' x:xmptk='XMP toolkit 2.9-9, framework 1.6'>

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#' xmlns:iX='http://ns.adobe.com/iX/1.0/'>

<rdf:Description rdf:about='' xmlns:Iptc4xmpCore='http://iptc.org/std/Iptc4xmpCore/1.0/xmlns/'>

</rdf:Description>

<rdf:Description rdf:about='' xmlns:photoshop='http://ns.adobe.com/photoshop/1.0/'>

</rdf:Description>

<rdf:Description rdf:about='' xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'>

</rdf:Description>

<rdf:Description rdf:about='' xmlns:photomechanic='http://ns.camerabits.com/photomechanic/1.0/'>

</rdf:Description>

</rdf:RDF>

</x:xmpmeta>

<?xpacket end='w'?>

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