[LINK] What does delete mean?

Jan Whitaker jwhit at janwhitaker.com
Sat May 23 09:43:35 AEST 2009



What really happens when you click 'delete photo'

http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/web/what-really-happens-when-you-click-delete-photo/2009/05/22/1242498914337.html
May 22, 2009 - 3:33PM

User photographs can still be found on many social networking sites 
including Facebook after people have deleted them, according to 
British researchers.

The 
<http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/05/20/attack-of-the-zombie-photos/>findings 
by a team from Cambridge University raise questions about the ability 
of users of the sites to permanently delete potentially embarrassing 
photographs.

The researchers posted photographs on 16 popular websites and noted 
the web addresses where the images were stored, before deleting them.

But researchers said that although the images appeared to have gone, 
they were still able to find them 30 days later on seven sites, 
including Facebook, by using the direct web addresses.

Special photo-sharing sites, such as Flickr and Google's Picasa, 
fared better than Facebook and Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces 
removed the photos instantly, the research found.

Joseph Bonneau, an American member of the research team, told AFP: 
"When you delete a photo, many of the sites don't actively remove it, 
they basically just wait for it be overwritten.

"In theory, the photos could take months to disappear.

"It is possible to have them removed right away but it takes more 
work on their part so it is easier for them just to leave it.

"They have a responsibility to ensure users' privacy and they are not 
fulfilling that responsibility."

A spokesman for Facebook said that while photographs are deleted from 
the site immediately, they may continue to exist for a short time elsewhere.

"When a user deletes a photograph from Facebook it is removed from 
our servers immediately," the spokesman told the BBC.

"However, URLs to photographs may continue to exist on the Content 
Delivery Network (CDN) after users delete them from Facebook, until 
they are overwritten.

"Overwriting usually happens after a short period of time."

[by his own admission the photos are still on their own controlled 
servers, so he is lying by his own admission. Or he doesn't 
understand his own technology. Spokespeople often don't.]



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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