Recently, hi5 changed the friend list display to include entries of deleted members. Members who had been deleted for TOS violations in the last 3 (or 4?) years have a suspended-boy.jpg or suspended-girl.jpg image replacing the display image.

Unfortunately, members deleted before the introduction of the "suspended" image substitution, are now restored to the friend list with their last display image. If that last image was the reason for the deletion, the offensive thumbnail image is restored. The full image can be retrieved by url modification.

An example of this behaviour is here.

honeypot project,
Thank you for bringing that up to our attention - I've taken note and will send it to the appropriate people so they can look into it. We appreciate it.

In the cases where the revived images involve minors, we hope you understand the legal implications of publishing them. hi5 must assume sole responsibility for releasing images to public view that it knows are illegal. We understand that this was an "unintended consequence" of a design change, but immediate action is required to cease the publication of such images.

It appears that hi5 has reacted strangely to this problem. It has deleted the unfortunate member who we picked to provide an example of the hi5 design flaw. In its haste to remove the evidence, CS failed to examine the example page closely. (Not the first time this has happened with our reports.) Had someone taken a momemt to backtrack the "inappropriate images," you would have noticed that not all the TOS violations were from deleted profiles.

In any case, our research indicates that members deleted for TOS violations prior to the 1st quarter of 2007 have had their profile entries with their last display image restored to EVERY friend list that they were on at the time of deletion. In case current users wish to examine their own friend lists for such examples, if your profile was created after Jan-Mar 2007, you will not find any examples. Putting it another way, if your profile number is greater than approximately 10nnnnnnn, you will not see any examples. The earlier you joined hi5, the more likely you will see this problem.

In order to assist hi5 with this problem, our Australian volunteer has researched some more. She reports that the problem is associated with profiles created before 11 May 2007. On that date, hi5 stopped using pics.hi5.com as the default server for display images and began using photosn.hi5.com where n = 1...5. All TOS deleted profiles without the suspended jpg thst she has located have images restored from the pics.hi5.com server.

A friend of mine, repeat, a friend of mine were deleted because of her's pics, without being guilty of anything! I've seen her pictures before being banned and she didn't had any obscene picture in her albums! On this way, i want to make an complain about this abusive act of Hi5! I'm very serious about and if is necessary i'll stop this madness my self, reporting this to an higher level! This girl is a very good kid which never posted any obscene words or pictures on Hi5! She's totally innocent and i give you my word for that! Please take act of my complain and verifie this deleted profile: http://new.hi5.com/friend/photos/displayPhotoUser.do?ownerId=370979976&albumId=338989038&photoId=3987275182&message=autoAccept ! Thank you very, very much! V. Al. Bell

Has been deleted.* Sorry for my spelling mistakes.