Google’s Right to Be Forgotten FAQ

On 27 April 2016 the European Union adopted a regulation that aimed to give back to people the control of their private data. Following a two-year period, the regulation will be enforceable after 25 May 2018. A noteworthy addition of this initiative is the ‘right of erasure’. Described under article 17, this means that European citizens have the right to request the deletion of personal data from any online source related to the subject without undue delay. This includes files, records in a database and any number of copies, even archived ones.

Interestingly, a more limited version — called the ‘right to be forgotten’ — already exists and has been put in action by Google. The company recently shared a transparency report detailing how the citizens of Europe exercised this right between 2014 and 2017.

What is Google’s right to be forgotten?

In May 2014, the Court Justice of the European Union obliged Google, Bing and any search engine provider who operates in the EU to provide a means for citizens to request the delisting of certain search results. The current ‘right to be forgotten’ policy won’t get rid of the data completely, just prevents it from popping up on a search list. It should be also mentioned that not all personal information can be hidden like that. According to the official script, the data must be “inadequate, irrelevant or excessive in relation to the purposes of the processing”. For this reason Google maintains the right to judge the request and refute it if necessary.

How do you apply for it?

Applying for the removal of private data is surprisingly easy. Google provides an online tool that helps users to fill out the request. First and foremost you need to have a valid Google accountto log in with. Following authentication, you’ll be instantly redirected to the index site removal form, where users are asked to provide their legal name, the country whose laws are related to the request, a contact address and the person whose right they wish to invoke. But the most important step is the identification of the particular search result you want to delist. For this you will need to enter the name that appears in the index, the URL of the page you want to ‘bleach’ and a solid reason for doing so.

If you find Google’s privacy tool to be too complicated, there are other alternatives. You can ask your lawyer to apply for the removal or use a third party site — such as forget.me – to handle the process.

How long does it take to be forgotten?

It’s hard to say. Google has received over 2.4 million requests between 2014 and 2017 and they each need to be judged individually, meaning that the process could take quite a while. From days to multiple weeks, the length of the ascertainment depends heavily on the current traffic. The actual task of hiding the search results, however, can be done within a few hours.

Is the right to be forgotten available in the U.S.?

Currently, no. The right to be forgotten is a regulation exclusive to the EU. In other words, only citizens of the European Union are able to invoke this right to make certain search results obsolete. The online removal tool only lists countries within the borders of the EU, and the system vets all requests, removing applications coming from the U.S. Unless congress pursues similar legislations, this right will continue to be unavailable for American citizens.

Does Google’s right to be forgotten work?

Certainly! Over the past three years, 43% of the 2.4 million requests have been granted, with 400,000 individuals in total pursuing this ‘forgotten’ status. Interestingly, 1,000 people generated around 15% of the overall requests, meaning that there is a group who are ‘regulars’ of the service. In most cases personal information and legal history were hidden, including social media sites, news articles and sometimes even government pages. In some rare instances people even requested the delisting of self-authored material because it became outdated.

Is the right to be forgotten censorship?

No, absolutely not! It’s intended to strengthen people’s right for privacy protection and not to abuse it. Don’t think for a moment that the right to be forgotten is just another toy for corporate entities to censor our information. As Google’s transparency report clearly shows, 89% of requests came from private individuals, which means that the service is overwhelmingly used by the public. As for the remaining 11% percent, only half of it consists of corporate figures and government officials.