Jill K's blog

If you look back in my blog I have been monitoring some files I deleted for some time. I think my first blog mentioning this was on May 20 2009. The files in question were deleted by me thorught the Ipernity interface in march 2009.

The files are no longer in my gallery or linked from my page. But the URL to the files that starts http://u1.ipernity.com/ still points to the full sized originals I uploaded. I have 6 files I monitor to see if they are ever purged.

So far no, none are ever purged. The still sit there veiewable by anyone who knows or guesses the full path to the url. There is no security on them And there is no way for me to know if anyone or how many people have visited that page and looked at or downloaded that image.

It's rather disheartening.

I wonder if the rules vary depending on the poster's location. Europe is more relaxed about above the waist nudity with topless beaches and such so those posting from Europe have a more lax set of rules applied. While the new more liberal US is much more politically correct and much more rigid and fascist in behaviour and so harsher rules are in force.

I was always worried about the far right in this country taking away my rights. I never expected the mid left to be even worse than my worst expectations for the other end of the spectrum.

Strange that they have th remove this from pubkic search function when it doesn't matter if you use it. N nudity or bare breasts allowed in public photos. Yet if you sign out and do a search for nude those photos abound. And there is no consequence to those users.

Marked all of my images private and have been slowly going back and trying to reallocate settings that will be such that the moderators are placated. But since there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the moderation I can never be certain that mi images won't be flagged and my account disabled.

Certainly only expect to see a small subset of the images I had posted before.

There is no security on the original file you upload. The full size image that you first put on the site. It sits there only protected by obscurity. You cannot control itm cannot delete it, cannot control access to it and are never EVER told when someone visits it.

You control the smaller representations Ipernity creates and the easy searchable links to the document. But not the original. If someone figures out the naming pattern and can find the original they can access the full size document and you will never know.

And if you delete all of your documents and your account....

The files still sit there accessable to anyone who can figure out the address of the files.

One more attempt at security through obscurity which is actually nearly no securiuty at all.

Don't believe me?

Make a test account.. I did... and put a few photos up.

make sure you bookmark the pages for the original images.

Not the links to the various smaller sized photos but the link that just shows you the photo.

The u1.ipernity.com link....

delete the account.

look at the file...this week, next week, 4 months from now... all the original images are still there...

And access is not by your account credentials...The account doesn't exist...

send the link to a friend... they can access the files as well...

I'm talking about the original or full size file you actually upload.

Not the thumbnails and smaller version Ipernity generates.

I deleted a few file back arounf the end of March. No longer show in my gallery.

Theoretically they were deleted. But I saved the link to the actual document. The direct link to the uploaded file. And the files are still there. They were never deleted.

I would expect Ipernity would run a periodic purge. Obviously they don't do this on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis. The question then is do they do it on a quarterly basis? Semi annual? Yearly? Ever?

Makes me hesitant to post anything additional since I have no sense that I can control at all ahow long the image will exist on the system. What if I decide a certain image is just not ver good and I would rather it wasn't on the system.

This issue with Zooomr was part of the reason I migrated from there to Ipernity. Because you never really deleted an image. You just deleted your links to and control of the image. I was under the impression that that was different here. But so far it seems I was rather mistaken.