Instagram has stored deleted user messages and photos on its servers for over a year
When you delete something from Instagram, it’s obvious that you are counting on it to disappear forever. However, in reality, it turned out that this is not the case. IT security researcher Saugat Pokharel was able to obtain copies of his photos and messages, which were removed from Instagram over a year ago. This indicates that the information deleted by users does not disappear anywhere from the servers of the social network.
Instagram announced that this was due to a bug in its system, which has now been fixed. Moreover, the researcher received a reward of $ 6,000 for finding this error. According to reports, Pokharel identified the issue in October 2019 and was fixed earlier this month.
“The researcher reported an issue that caused the deleted images and messages of some Instagram users to be included in the backup if they used the Upload Your Information tool. We fixed the issue and found no evidence that this error was being exploited. We would like to thank the researcher for informing us about the problem, ”an Instagram representative commented on this issue.
It remains unclear how widespread the problem was and whether it affected all Instagram users or only a subset of them. Usually, when a user removes any information from online services or social networks, it takes some time before it disappears from the internal servers. As for Instagram, according to the official data, the deleted user information continues to be stored on the servers of the social network for 90 days, after which it is permanently deleted.
