Meituan Apologizes After Deleting Users' Photos Without Permission

Chinese food delivery giant Meituan has come under fire after a wave of Android users reported that thousands of photos and videos were automatically wiped from their phones, with system logs pointing to the company's app as the source of the deletions.

The complaints erupted today when the hashtag #MeituanDeletesPhotos trended on Chinese social media, drawing widespread public scrutiny.

Android users reported that, without performing any action, hundreds or even thousands of photos and videos had been erased from their phone galleries. System interception logs identified Meituan as the app that executed the deletion.

One user, identified as "zjason," claimed to have permanently lost 504 gigabytes of data, including family photos and work files accumulated over six years. Another user said 1,314 photos were deleted, with phone alerts explicitly naming Meituan.

In response, Meituan's customer service stated that the issue was rare and stemmed from a third-party software development kit (SDK) conflict during automatic cache cleaning on Android devices. According to the company, around 180 users had contacted customer service regarding the problem, and the total number of affected users was estimated to be in the hundreds. The company said it had issued an emergency fix shortly after the issue was identified.

Meituan emphasized that the incident was limited to users' local devices, and that the app had not accessed, stored, or transferred any personal data. The company also stated that user privacy and account information remained unaffected.

The company has since formed a specialized technical support team, working with security experts to help affected users recover lost data. Meituan has apologized to each affected user and pledged to cover all related costs and compensation, according to a report from The Paper.