An X user says Anthropic’s Claude Code uncovered 14,219 front-camera images on an Android phone that were absent from its gallery. AIstify has not independently verified the files, their origin or the claim that other apps could access them.
In a separate October 24 post, the same account, @coolerwave, claimed the tool found 145,763 previously deleted iPhone photos in a thumbnail directory. The author said the material included identity documents, banking screenshots and a cryptocurrency recovery phrase.
BREAKING: Claude Code found 14,219 photos of my face on my Android that I never took. Phone was secretly taking them almost every time I picked it up. Even when I was just lying in bed. Even at home. Not screenshots. Real frames from the front camera. On the train. In the car. At home. When I just grabbed it to check the time. They were just sitting in a system cache. Timestamps and GPS on them. Nothing in Gallery. Nothing in Recently Deleted. Plugged the phone into my laptop, made a full backup, told Claude Code to look for any front-camera files that weren’t in my photos. It pulled /data/system/users/0/faceunlock/cache and another folder inside Google Play Services. Over 14 thousand files. Normal ones and infrared from Face Unlock. Every single one had time and location. Started scrolling. Almost everything from the last 15 months. Then I saw a file created 2 seconds ago. I was still looking at the folder. Phone kept taking photos while I was reading this. Google and the phone makers say Face Unlock turns everything into a mathematical model and deletes the image right away. On this phone the raw frames were just sitting there. Some of the processes writing to that folder were from system diagnostics. Couple of old apps that still had camera permission could also get in. Turned off diagnostics, revoked camera access from everything that doesn’t need it, cleared the cache. But how many of these frames already went somewhere else, I don’t know. If you want to check yours, plug it in, make a full backup or use ADB, and ask Claude to look for front-camera files outside your Gallery. Path above is where mine were.
— Cooler (@coolerwave) October 28, 2026
The October 28 Android post alleged that facial images spanning 15 months carried timestamps and GPS data. The author subsequently shared a scan prompt requesting a read-only inspection. A prompt alone does not demonstrate that the named directories exist or are accessible.
Android’s biometric guidelines call for raw biometric data to remain inaccessible outside a secure isolated environment. They require acquisition, enrollment and recognition inside that environment for Class 2 and Class 3 biometrics. Implementations and security classes vary across devices.
Apple’s sandboxing documentation likewise describes restrictions on third-party apps accessing other apps’ information and system resources. These design rules do not rule out bugs, but establishing either alleged privacy failure requires reproducible forensic evidence rather than an AI-generated inventory alone.
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