Most of us live in the belief that even if we put some stupidity on the Internet, we can always delete it, or even the entire account for safety net. In theory, yes, but in practice … not really, the informant warns.
Former Twitter security chief Pieter “Madge” Zatko recently attended a US Senate hearing. The expert testified that the company does not have a developed mechanism for deleting data after users of the site have deleted their accounts.
Twitter Whistleblower Warns: You Won’t Delete Your Data
Zatko has been a thorn in Twitter’s eye since he first broke the company’s insider news last month. In the Senate, he deepened topics that had previously been forwarded by CNN and The Washington Post.
As evidenced, Twitter does not have a reliable way to delete users’ data, even if they delete their account on the platform. Therefore, Internet users are not sure that their information really disappears from the networks and servers of the company. In some cases, the platform may even lose the ability to assign which data belongs to which remote account.
Twitter denied the whistleblower’s claims that Zatko’s information “creates a false narrative” around the company. The platform also noted that the company has a workflow that “starts the data deletion process” of the user. However, Twitter does not say how long it will take to completely delete user data.
Experts - removing content from the Internet is “almost impossible”
Columbia Business School social media researcher Sandra Matz reminds us that “we often mindlessly share our data online.” - It sounds childish, but everything we post online will never be private again. Removing content once downloaded from the Internet by pressing the reset button is almost impossible, the scientist convinces.
To make matters worse, the latest information indicates that the respective services could theoretically recover even deleted data from Twitter if they have the right tools to do so.
- Email, social media comments or private messages are usually stored in three places. On the sender’s device, on the recipient’s server, and on the company’s servers. In an ideal world, if you delete this message, it will be deleted in all three places. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, says cybersecurity researcher Ravi Sen of Texas A&M University.
The expert recalls that it is unlikely that any Internet user sends special emails asking for the deletion of data to every company and service in which he deletes an account. However, he also adds that the longer a message is deleted, the less likely it is to retrieve its content from the sender’s device.
Source: Wprost
