Facebook is running into some issues with its privacy again and this may not be good especially when its IPO is around the corner. It has been discovered to the astonishment of a vast majority of users who had deleted their facebook pictures almost 3 years ago, that their pictures remained in Facebook after some intense digging.
Facebook photos that you ‘delete’ are indeed removed from your profile, and aren’t linked to from anywhere on the site. Ars revealed, those images aren’t being deleted from Facebook’s servers, and that means that anybody with the direct URL for those images can still access and view them. The most important thing is Facebook is aware of this fact for more than 3 years now. However in 2009, Facebook responded to comments and complaints by claiming that it was “working with our content delivery network (CDN) partner to significantly reduce the amount of time that backup copies persist”.
Facebook spokesperson Simon Axten reiterated that the company was “currently working with the CDN on a fix that will delete photo and video content from the CDN’s cache shortly after it’s removed from Facebook. The fix is already in place for videos, and we hope to implement it for profile pictures and photos in the coming weeks.” Company spokesperson Frederic Wolens stated: “The systems we used for photo storage a few years ago did not always delete images from content delivery networks in a reasonable period of time, even though they were immediately removed from the site.”
We are yet to understand why Facebook is so lax about security and privacy and if they are giving you the real picture. Looks like Facebook might also get involved with the government with a billion photos, it is one of the hottest places to get more info about anybody.