You can access data from deleted forks, deleted repositories and even private repositories on GitHub. And it is available forever. This is known by GitHub, and intentionally designed that way.
I don’t think you can create private forks from public repos (the fork is public upon creation). This is more like the opposite:
If there’s a private repo that is forked and the fork is made public, further changes to that original private repo become public too, despite the repo remaining private and the fork not being synced.
Misleading title.
If my thing was public in the past, and I took it private, the old public code is still public.
That’s… How the Internet works anyway.
That is not exactly what they are saying. You could create a private fork of a public repo and the code in your private fork is publicly accessible.
I don’t think you can create private forks from public repos (the fork is public upon creation). This is more like the opposite:
If there’s a private repo that is forked and the fork is made public, further changes to that original private repo become public too, despite the repo remaining private and the fork not being synced.
The title literally spells out the concern, which is that code that is in a private or deleted repository is, in some circumstances, visible publicly.
What title would you propose?
The “Accessing Private Repo Data” section covers a situation where code that has always been private becomes publicly visible.
the title is dyslexic at best