Facebook’s delay in erasing photos deleted by users is ongoing privacy issue

Burning those old Facebook photos (photo Ars Technica)

Users who delete their Facebook accounts have found their photographs still on the internet years later. The proper procedure is to manually delete each photograph or other post to your wall before you delete your account.

Privacy experts and users say Facebook has no timely mechanism to remove photographs and other private material from its servers.

Facebook agrees. Spokesperson Frederi Wolens told the Toronto Star “We have been working hard to ensure photos are fully deleted within 30 days of the removal request being received”

Ars Technica reported this problem in 2008 but Facebook has not fixed the problem. “As long as someone has a direct link to the .jpg file in question, the photo would stay accessible for an indefinite amount of time,” said Jacqui Cheng Ars Technica Senior Editor in the Star.

With 845 million users and an IPO underway Facebook is only promising to work harder on a solution. Wolens said “until this migration (to new systems) is complete, URLs from deleted photos stored on this legacy system may still be accessible.”

Google Webmaster

Google has a tool in Google Webmaster that can help to remove your pictures from the web. Content Removal will remove web pages or picture links one at a time, if you are the owner of the website.

This tool is helpful if you’ve said something in a comment on the web that you regret. By entering the URL of the page you can request that Google remove it from their search. There is a secondary cache removal for pages that are no longer live but still in Google’s cache.

The process is tedious and not perfect. Google has plenty of warnings why it doesn’t work 100% but for a photograph you’ve truly regret, it’s the only way to take it offline when the owner of the site is not able to help you.

Google has some practical suggestions on how to keep your personal and private information off the internet in the first place.

You need a Gmail account to use Webmaster tools but not a website. You can also file a complaint form if you believe web content should be removed for legal, harassment or moral purposes. Proceed with caution since it requires filing an affidavit, which is a legal document.

Additional Resources

Toronto Star – Facebook delay

Ars Technica – Over 3 years later