Do uploaded files remain on Netlify systems after site deletion?

Support
,
#1

I am experimenting with the API deploy for an enterprise application we are writing. What puzzles me is that files that I’ve never uploaded before are not required. This is clearly because those files (contained in as OSS landing page template) have been uploaded to your systems before, by another user. This worries me because I am afraid that the files I’ll upload as part of my sites will remain in your server even if I delete the site.
Is this the case? This can be a major privacy problem for us.

thank you in advance,
Marco

#2

hi there, how is the site being deleted?

the reason i ask is that many folks assume that if they delete the git repo their site hosted by netlify will also be deleted. That’s not the case - the site will still exist on each of our global edge nodes that are sync’d with the origin server that deployed the site.

the way to delete a site completely is to delete it from Netlify - most folks do this via the UI, but I am assuming the API should work the same way. If you can give us a bit more details, we can definitely check that that assumption is correct!

#3

hi Perry, thanks for your reply.
The deletion has been made with the UI, settings, danger zone ( :slight_smile: ) write the name, delete.

Anyway, the first time that I uploaded a demo site (taken from https://bootstrapmade.com/regna-bootstrap-onepage-template/) I recorded network traffic with dev tools, and the UI only uploaded the index.html file (that I modified indeed). I think that this shows that all the other files have been uploaded before by someone else, the hashes recognized and your systems didn’t require them.
so, if this assumption is true, I am afraid that somewhere my files may remain on your cache beyond my control.
tia

#4

hei @pomarc,

Thanks for that additional info. I am going to check in with the team and see if we can get some answers for you, but i might not get a chance to do that for a few days. Thanks for your patience, and i will get you some insight as soon as i can!

#5

Hiya @pomarc,

We may keep files in our system after deletion in some cases. More likely, since you use a demo site, someone ELSE uploaded the same files so they are already in our backing store. We store files by checksum, so if someone else has already uploaded the same checksum (or uploads it after you), we’ll use or keep the initial copy for your site (or their site as well).