Re:Deleted Facebook photos persist in CDN cache 16 months later
by pasbesoin on Tuesday October 12, 2010 @12:45PM
(#1783987)
My understanding may be wrong, but I recall one explanation a year or two ago that the manner in which the photos are aggregated for storage makes deleting/removing a single photo relatively quite expensive in terms of resource utilization.
If that's the case, my suggestion would be to effect an immediate deletion by overwriting the image with a "blank" image dynamically constructed to be the same size as the one it's replacing. Slap it over the old one and be done. Perhaps also executing a full deletion/removal periodically and/or whenever the encompassing aggregation is updated for another reason.
There would be some continued leakage potential for context, but at least the image itself (and any embedded metadata, although I'm assuming FB strips that upon upload) would be effectively gone.
If that's the case, my suggestion would be to effect an immediate deletion by overwriting the image with a "blank" image dynamically constructed to be the same size as the one it's replacing. Slap it over the old one and be done. Perhaps also executing a full deletion/removal periodically and/or whenever the encompassing aggregation is updated for another reason.
There would be some continued leakage potential for context, but at least the image itself (and any embedded metadata, although I'm assuming FB strips that upon upload) would be effectively gone.