280,000 private individuals in Europe have made a number of requests to Google asking the company to remove certain web pages from its search results.
In
May 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled that an Internet search
engine has to consider such requests from a person about search results
related to that person's name. Since that ruling, the number of privacy
requests had been consistently climbing. This includes, but is not
limited to a
woman whose name appeared in prominent news articles after her husband
died, seeking removal of her address and an individual who contacted HIV
a decade ago.
Many
people are trying to take advantage of this law by making requests to
protect their privacy online. Unfortunately, Google accidentally
published data after several of these requests had been made. This data
covers more than 75% of all requests to date.
Google has the ability to accept or reject all requests made. As of March, 46%
of all requests had been granted. 38% had been rejected. The others are
still pending a decision. Success of the request depends on the type of
request made. Whereas removal requests that were marked with the label
political, public figure, serious crime or child protection all had much higher rejection rates.
More
emphasis has been added to the right to be forgotten requests released
by Google, but the requests made by private individuals to protect their
personal privacy have still been ignored.
This
new development stresses the importance of Google being more open to
the privacy requests it receives and how it processes information.
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