Finally, Facebook to delete your embarrassing photos forever

In a good news for Facebook users, the social networking website has finally decided to remove millions of embarrassing and inappropriate pictures forever after keeping them for years against users' wishes.

Until recently, any pictures erased from an account would in fact remain stored by Facebook and anyone who had the direct link to that picture could therefore still view it.

Now the pictures erased by a user will permanently be wiped from the system within 14 days, but with a potential maximum delay of 30 days, The 'Daily Mail' reported.

Pictures will be immediately removed from view on a user's account from the moment they delete it.

This issue was first raised three years ago after a 28-year-old Cambridge student discovered that pictures he had deleted from the site were still available for all to see if they had saved a link to them.

Bonneau told the Sunday Times that Facebook has taken a very long time to bring the change.

"It has taken them a very long time to do it because this change probably represents a huge engineering effort," Bonneau said.

"The lesson hopefully to other companies is to build in privacy right form the start, because if you don't get it right first time, it can be a huge effort to fix," he added.

Research suggests that up to 91 per cent of employers now use social sites such as MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn to screen job applicants.

As many as 69 per cent say they have rejected candidates based on information on their accounts.