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If you have stored any pictures on face book, then had a second thought and "deleted" them, you need to understand that currently they are just hidden (and not very well at that). The link on your face book page is removed, but the picture is still there. Anyone, friend or foe, who has kept a direct link to that picture (easily done in most browsers) will be able to see that unwanted picture at any time. They will then be able to copy them (this may be illegal: but if they are circumventing your deletion then that may not worry them).

Why is this of interest to you, if you are careful? Well if like us, you are very careful about images you display, but one of your friends isn't, then asking them to remove completely any image which for good reason you don't want others see… just may not be possible at the moment.  There is a link at the end of this blog post with more information.

The other side of the coin is also of interest to our customers.

Actually within our software, we employ a similar process to Facebook's deletion mechanism. It is very difficult and in some circumstance not possible by using the Ava programme itself to actually remove certain data. This is intentional. We hide data rather than delete it to preserve audit trails and ensure that important stuff cannot get accidentally lost, ie. Prevent the "O.M.G!" circumstance. Important data can be recovered, it's called peace of mind.

The data within our software is either private or only carefully exposed on the web (that is to say security and privacy measures are built in from the very start). This means it is very very difficult to loose data and your business data is still very private and secure. Actually loosing data is almost impossible: if you have regular backups as well. But we are supplying software to keep your commercial data - your "intellectual property" aka "IP" private and secure. We take IP or intellectual property very seriously. We don't want either our software (code) or for example a list of your employees or customers email addresses and phone numbers to be available to competitors for any reason.

So this brings us to an initiative by the EU - yes another EU initiative. They are proposing an individual may request deletion of any data that a company holds on them. Where Facebook, Google, LinkedIn et al is concerned this seems all well and good. Quite simply an individual says - I dont want to use Facebook any more, please close my account and delete all my stored data.

However any such legislation needs to be very carefully framed. Removing personal data in the case of a staffing agency could prove very expensive. The following couple of considerations need to be taken into account:

1. If data is backed up, then those backups would have to be destroyed, as by very nature they would contain a complete copy of the data.
2. Rupert Murdoch and News International would probably be quite happy if the received such a request (authenticated or not) for a wide range of individuals and "consequentially" had to delete data legally.

As the Chinese would say we live in interesting times.

Relevant links which might also be of interest:

Nearly 3 years later deleted facebook photos are still online

Viviane Reding Vice-President of the European Commission EU Justice Commissioner Your data, your rights

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) Retaining personal data (Principle 5)