With the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union one and a half year ago, search engines may be forced to erase some search results that could link to individuals on the internet.
Search engines, such as Google, tend to cache websites around the world wide web and could still keep them even when the websites are long gone.
Since the ruling took place in May 2014, Google has received more than 350,000 requests and has ever since evaluated 1.2 million webpages for removal. According to The Hill, Google has removed more than 441,000 webpages from its search results in Europe since last year.
The new EU ruling allows individuals to ask Google and other search engines to remove links to documents such as articles and court judgments concerning their names. However, the search engine companies may also assess each request.
Google has set its own guidelines as to how it removes links on its search engine. One of which is to take into consideration whether the person is a public or private figure. Another is if it concerns a crime, the significance will be taken into account.
The following are questions asked by Google prior to removal of any links on their search engine, according to the Removal Policies set by the company:
- Is it a government-issued identification number?
- Is it confidential, or is it publicly available information?
- Can it be used for common financial transactions?
- Can it be used to obtain more information about an individual that would result in financial harm or identity theft?
- Is it a personally identifiable nude or sexually explicit photo or video shared without consent?
What do you think of the hefty requests that Google received for its link removal service? Do you have some information about you in the world wide web that you want to be erased?
