A computer researcher has discovered a WhatsApp bug on the iPhone that does not allow you to delete images sent by mistake: how it works
"Delete for all" is one of the most used features of WhatsApp. It allows you to delete messages that have just been sent by mistake and have not yet been read by the recipient. Introduced a couple of years ago, it has been the salvation for many users who had mistakenly sent a message or photo to the wrong person or had shared a wrong document.
Until now, all WhatsApp users thought that once the message (text, photo, video) was deleted, the recipient had no chance to see it. In reality, this is not the case. Computer researcher Shitesh Sachan discovered that on the iPhone some WhatsApp messages are not deleted, even using the "Delete for All" feature. Doing various experiments, the researcher found that if you delete a photo or video with the "Delete for All" feature, the media content is actually saved within the iPhone's memory.
The reason is very simple. On WhatsApp for iPhone there is an option to automatically save media content within the Gallery. Even if we haven't seen the message and it has been deleted, the image or video is saved to the smartphone's memory. To clarify and make users understand what happens, we need to specify that on WhatsApp the content is really deleted, unfortunately the same does not happen in the Gallery.
WhatsApp for iPhone, what happens when I delete a message
The IT researcher immediately informed WhatsApp about the bug and received a very peculiar answer from a spokesperson: "The "Delete for All" feature is meant to delete the message and there is no guarantee that the media (or the message) will be deleted permanently. The feature only focuses on the presence of the message in WhatsApp." So, it means that the application's engineers are aware of the presence of the bug, but for now they won't do anything to try to fix it.
What does this mean? When you send an image on WhatsApp to a friend who has an iPhone and you want to delete the message because you took the wrong picture, it's pretty much pointless for you to do so. The image is automatically saved on the smartphone and the recipient of the message can find it within the Gallery.
Deleted messages on WhatsApp, what happens on Android
On Android the WhatsApp bug is not present. But users can't sleep peacefully: if you send a message with a photo to a friend who has an iPhone and then delete it, he will be able to find the multimedia content inside your Gallery.
This doesn't only happen to WhatsApp
If you're thinking of deleting your WhatsApp account because of this annoying bug, rest assured: it's not the only messaging application to suffer from this problem. Even on Telegram the exact same thing happens, but the developers of the Russian app have already released an update that fixes the bug. For the time being, WhatsApp doesn't seem to want to correct its error. We'll see.