Downloadable Product redirects - symlinks not aging

[PenAffair]

I found this old thread http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.p...-being-deleted which explains my question, but the answer given is not clear to me.

I've setup my downloadable products redirects, and it is working fine, but the Zencart wiki documentation says :-

"Download by Redirect ... when set to True ... uses the Linux/unix "symlink" feature to create a temporary file "stub" in the /pub folder. Then your customer is directed to that file-stub for their download. This means the customer can only ever access it via that stub, which disappears after their download is over. "

The problem is, it doesn't disappear after their download is over, and they can simply use the url of the download to get the file over and over again, bypassing the Zencart limitations, and nullifying all the work of moving the downloads directory and using redirects.

The old past I linked suggests it somehow disappears over time and/or with order quantity. But if I do not run a mass-market shop, how long or how many orders are we talking about that the link will still be valid? That post was against an old version of Zencart too, so I'm not sure if something is different now.

Am I missing something? Should the symlink be removed immediately? If not, how effective is it really at preventing repeated downloads and sharing the link with others?

Thanks.