14 DAY TRIAL // Google is out of options and has launched a service to allow Europeans to ask for their personal data to be removed from online search results, as per the decision taken by the European Court of Justice.
According to the ruling that was taken a couple of weeks ago, search engines can be asked to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.
"In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information. When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials," Google says.
One of the main concerns with the new ruling was that criminals would try to hide their pasts. The same can be said about politicians who may want to make some past decision they made irrelevant to their current lives.
At the very least, Google has managed to find a way to keep such demands at bay in order to continue to protect the right to be informed of everyone else, while also respecting the right to be forgotten of some individuals.
The company has put together a form in order to help those who want data removed to make the request, including the full name for which the search results are to be removed, and the links you want removed, complete with an explanation about why the page should be removed.
Users also need to include a copy of a valid ID, whether it’s a driver’s license, photo ID or national ID card. This was implemented in order to combat fraud, since the company often receives requests from people impersonating others, trying to harm competitors or trying to suppress perfectly legal information.
The European decision has been highly criticized around the world because it opens a door to everyone trying to erase and rewrite their own history. Furthermore, just because a link no longer appears in Google, it does not mean that the content has vanished from the Internet, but simply that it no longer appears in search results. If one goes to a certain newspaper’s website, for instance, and searches for the individual’s name who asked for a link to be removed, the article will still show up.