The social network would not have immediately deleted these photos and messages, says Saugat Pokharel, security researcher.
Selon TechCrunch, Saugat Pokharel found that when he downloaded his data from Instagram, his data contained photos and private messages exchanged with other users he had previously deleted.
Normally Instagram says it takes 90 days to completely erase user information, but Pokharel discovered that his allegedly deleted data from over a year ago was still stored on Instagram’s servers and could be downloaded easily.
The researcher then notified Instagram, who thanked him by offering him a bonus of $ 6,000. This is not the first time this kind of error has occurred. In 2019, Twitter faced the same problem, with private messages that were kept for years after they were supposedly deleted.
“The researcher reported an issue where deleted Instagram images and messages would be included in a copy of their information if they used our information upload tool”, Explained a spokesperson for Instagram to the TechCrunch site. “We solved the problem and found no evidence of abuse. We thank the researcher for reporting this issue to us.”
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