Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
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Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
#2Oh they fully delete those? I didn't actually expect messages to be erased when we un-send it.
Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
#3And then run facial recognition on them? Nice way to capture our biometric data on the cloud :D
Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
#4> "The researcher reported an issue where someone’s deleted Instagram images and messages would be included in a copy of their information (...) We’ve fixed the issue"
This makes it sound like they consider "you could see it" the issue, not "we were still keeping it". In other words, the fix was to hide it, not to delete it.
If I were the Irish DPA (and actually wanted to do my job and had the resources to, instead of being intentionally lazy/crippled to attract tech firm headquarters), I'd definitely be asking for retention plans and evidence that the data is now being removed in a timely manner, and start issuing fines (small ones for past transgressions, big ones if they keep doing it or don't have a decent plan how to make sure to get rid of data they shouldn't be having).
For comparison: Deutsche Wohnen (large real estate) got slapped [1] with a 14.5 million EUR fine for over-retaining sensitive tenant data and not having an automated system to delete it.
[1] https://www.dataprotectionreport.com/2019/11/first-multi-mil...
Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
#5What is not revealed is that the actual bug was that an end user found the deleted data, not that the data wasn't deleted. Should be no surprise that Instagram would have similar data retention policies as its parent company.
Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
#6> Pokharel discovered the bug in October last year and says it was fixed earlier this month (2020, august)
Shouldn't there be fines for this?
Took almost an year after being reported.
Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
#7Maybe you shouldn't share that info in the first place? Even if the provider(Instagram in this case) acts in good faith and deletes the data, 3rd parties would still own it(i.e US sec agencies, various crawlers etc)
Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
#8I want to know if the photos are securely deleted. It's not enough that the mere reference to a file is gone. I want everything overwritten with zeroes, and the photo made properly irrecoverable.
Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
#9We know that HN is visited by a fair share of Facebook employees.
Can some of you weigh in (anonymously?) on this topic? Do you guys do hard deletes of user data instead of just soft deletes? If so, are logs or backups kept? For how long?
In other words: if I'm a user of $POPULAR_SERVICE and I delete my account at time t0, is there a t1 > t0 after which every trace of my data is gone from the platform?
My (cynical) guess is no, but I hope I'm wrong :)
Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year
#10We know that HN is visited by a fair share of Facebook employees. Can some of you weigh in (anonymously?) on this topic? Do you guys do hard deletes of user data instead of just soft deletes? If so, are logs or backups kept? For how long? In other words: if I'm a user of $POPULAR_SERVICE and I delete my account at time t0, is there a t1 > t0 after which every trace of my data is gone from the platform? My (cynical) g…
DELETED=TRUE