The mechanics behind 'we have deleted your data

A deletion request removes only the copies the service can find: the original file and account record reliably, backups, derived data and logs often later or not at all. Sending one is a click; what follows is a search, only as good as the service's record of where your data went.

The request is a query, not a switch

There is no single flag that means "this person's data" sitting next to a single delete button. A request has to be turned into a search across every place the file or its derivatives might have landed: the primary database, the object store, any cache, any backup, any log line that captured the upload, and any downstream system the file was forwarded to for processing. A well-built service maintains a map of where a user's data can end up and runs the search against that map. A service without the map is guessing, and a guess is not the same thing as deletion even when it is made in good faith.

What "deleted" usually covers first

The original image and the account record are the parts a request reliably reaches, because they are the parts every service's engineers built the deletion tooling around - they are also the parts a user actually asked about. What "deleted" means once a file sits on someone's server already covers the technical layer underneath this: a pointer removed from an index while the bytes persist until whatever holds them expires on its own schedule. A deletion request is the trigger for that removal, not a guarantee that every copy vanishes on the same day.

What a request often misses

Backups are the most common gap. A backup exists specifically to survive deletion elsewhere, so a file removed from the live system can still be sitting in a rotation that only expires weeks or months later. A thorough policy states that explicitly - "removed from live systems immediately, purged from backups within N days" - rather than leaving the backup case unaddressed, which is the more common pattern. The UK regulator accepts the gap but not neglect of it: the ICO's right-to-erasure guidance says "the key issue is to put the backup data 'beyond use', even if it cannot be immediately overwritten."

Derived data is the second gap. An embedding computed from the photo, a perceptual hash, a cached thumbnail, a crash report that happened to capture the input - each of these is a separate object with its own storage location, and a deletion tool that only touches the original file leaves all of them standing. Object storage lifecycle rules are usually the honest answer for the object-store layer: an expiry policy that ages files out automatically catches copies a manual deletion tool would otherwise miss, precisely because it does not depend on anyone remembering to ask for them.

Logs are the third, and the easiest to overlook, because a log line rarely looks like "your data" - it looks like a timestamp and a request ID, with the file reference buried inside.

What a confirmation should actually confirm

A deletion confirmation that just says "done" is not verification, it is a status message. Under UK GDPR the same guidance expects a response "without undue delay and at the latest within one month," saying whether the data was erased or the request refused. A confirmation that names what was checked - primary storage, derivative storage, active backups, with a stated timeline for backup rotation - is the version worth trusting, because it shows the request was matched against an actual inventory rather than a single table. None of this is legal advice about what a jurisdiction requires; it is the operational shape of the process regardless of which law triggered it.

Rate Cock is one of many services where a submitted score sits behind an account, and the honest version of a deletion answer there is the same as anywhere else: name what gets checked, name the backup window, and say so before anyone has to ask twice. The equivalent question for a physical measurement kept as data is Measure My Cock's territory, since a number derived from a tape measure is retained the same way a score is. Comparing how different rating tools handle account data is exactly the kind of due diligence Penis Rater's tool coverage is built for, and a deletion policy is one of the things worth comparing before an account, not after. For a commissioned human review, the deletion question extends to a person's written notes as well as any file they were shown, which is a detail worth checking with whichever judging service was used before assuming a photo-only policy covers it. Whether the score itself is worth treating as sensitive in the first place is the question underneath all of this, and it does not go away just because the underlying photo is gone.