The internet doesn't forget

Last year, while presenting to a group of young people in Wesselsbron in the Free State, I did a simple illustration to demonstrate the practicality of the saying, The internet does not forget and to stress the need to exercise care when we post online.

I whisked out a memory stick and shared my PC screen onto a larger screen so that they could see me transferring some pictures and documents to it. I erased all the newly saved files, leaving the USB device at zero megabytes of storage and then boldly declared that I could retrieve the deleted files. True to my inward prediction, someone shouted, "Not so fast, please format that USB stick!" I could see the gleeful expressions on their faces as I silently complied under their intense scrutiny. Those looks clearly said, "Let's see you recover them now Mr Internet-does-not-forget!"

I then scanned the USB device with some simple recovery software. It was set to deep scanning mode and so took a while to scan and that turned out to be a real test of patience  for my young audience. As the magnifying glass rotated in what seemed like endless repetitions on the projected screen, it became increasingly convincing to the lads and lasses that whatever I was trying to do was not going to work. However, after this "eternity," of waiting, the files were eventually recovered, leaving many a mouth agape! It was an amusing moment for me as at that point I had established the right context for me to go ahead and drive three key points home:

 1) Deleting something from your cellphone, tablet, computer or other device,  does not necessarily mean that you have also erased copies that might still remain on either the hard storage or on the cloud.  If a mere memory stick can withstand the brutalities of deletion and formatting, what more of information that has been saved and at times replicated across unknown and remote servers scattered all over the globe?

2) Deleting those nudes or other inappropriate social media posts, does not guarantee that screenshots were not taken and shared unknown to yourself or that your friends have not shared your post across different social network platforms e.g from Tik Tok to Twitter, then to Facebook. The more your content is shared to third party social networks  (owned by different companies with different storage points), the less ownership and control you have on your content.

3) Always remember that social media companies do not really delete what you post. What we consider as deletion, is not really removal of your content on their side, but more of restricting it's public visibility. In the terms and conditions of many social networks, they state that they do not take responsibility for residual copies of deleted content 

Indeed the internet does not forget and that is something that we should never forget. My youthful audience certainly will not be forgetting this sound truth anytime soon!