Hello Everyone, I recently received a copyright strike to one PDF file but I am unable to remove it, so please assist me in this process as it is critical to the survival of my server. Regards, Sunder.

How long ago did you delete the topic? What grace period do you have set for uploads in /admin/settings? Check yoursiteurl/admin/site_settings/category/files?filter=grace Uploads aren’t immediately removed, but you can lower the grace period and then trigger the job in sidekiq to eliminate files sooner, or go fishing around in the shared folder of your install to purge it by hand.

Hi @Sunder. :wave: The easiest way is to find the topic the PDF was uploaded to and find the online URL; it’s possible that if you have a “copyright strike” then you were informed of the URL in question. Do you store your uploads on your Discourse server or in an S3-compatible object storage bucket? Once you know the URL and where you are keeping the files, you can go in and remove it. :slight_smile:

Hi @maiki , Thanks for replying. I know the URL of the PDF, it was hosted in Discourse server. I will share the URL with you privately. Please help me to remove it.

@maiki , I’m unable to send message privately to you. URL is like - https://example.com/uploads/short-url/4KPGqUiq9ssjg3WeSKA5EdqKPGN.pdf

@maiki & Team, Please help me with your suggestion, it’s really important for my server’s survival.

Yes, @Stephen, I removed that topic, but the PDF url is still accessible.

Hi @Stephen , I lowered the grace period to 1 hour. But, still the URL is accessible and file is downloading. Can you please tell another way? Where can I find the shared folder and uploaded file? Thank you.

[image] Sunder: I lowered the grace period to 1 hour. But, still the URL is accessible and file is downloading. Did you also? Stephen: trigger the job in sidekiq This would be https://yoursiteurl/sidekiq/scheduler and the job name Jobs::PurgeDeletedUploads should be manually triggered after changing the setting.

Which of the two Grace periods did you lower? If you didn’t trigger the job in sidekiq it will happen automatically, eventually.

@Stephen , I lowered “clean orphan uploads grace period hours” to 1 hour. Should I lower “purge deleted uploads grace period days” also? [grace] After lowering “purge deleted uploads grace period days” shall I trigger the job manually?

I got a copyright strike to PDF file but I'm unable remove it

Product Support

Stephen (Stephen) October 18, 2022, 5:58pm 6

Have you removed the topic where the PDF was uploaded to?

Topic		Replies	Views
How to delete a pdf file that has been uploaded? Product Support	2	672	April 29, 2021
Upload Deletion via API Feature uploads , rest-api	5	330	February 25, 2026
How to delete a part of an archived forum .odt file Product Support	11	1266	March 17, 2019
Auto purge uploads from old deleted posts Feature	6	1466	February 23, 2026
How to Delete Uploaded Files? Product Support	28	8558	February 18, 2025

I got a copyright strike to PDF file but I'm unable remove it

Related topics