I will say this. I had to restore my phone from the firmware. I deleted all backups, local and icloud. Later i reinstalled everything from firmware off of apple's server. Obviously since i deleted backups I didnt' do any restore from backups. With my new install I turned off icloud photo backups. I turned off photostream. i only use icloud for contacts. I manually added everything back. That was like 3 weeks ago. But yesterday i decided i'd start using icloud for back ups so i flick it on. Every setting still the same. Photo backup is still switched off. I look at the icloud stored files when backup was done and i noticed under General, usage, icloud, manage storage, right there was a giant photo backup of all the photos. I deleted them. So it was for some reason backup up photos even though under the icloud settings it that's switched off. So i honestly don't have faith in apple that they won't store stuff.