Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
When you delete something from Instagram you expect it to be gone for good. But when security researcher Saugat Pokharel requested a copy of photos and direct messages from the photo-sharing app, he was sent data he’d deleted more than a year ago, showing that the information had never been entirely removed from Instagram’s servers.
Instagram says this was due to a bug in its system that it’s now fixed, and Pokharel has been rewarded a $6,000 bug bounty for highlighting the problem. As reported by TechCrunch, Pokharel discovered the bug in October last year and says it was fixed earlier this month.
“The researcher reported an issue where someone’s deleted Instagram images and…
