Google claims to be expanding the types of personal data it eliminates from search results to include your physical address, phone number, and passwords.
Previously, the feature only covered information that could be used to steal your identity or money; now, you can ask Google to hide certain URLs that could lead someone to your house or give them access to your accounts.
Google is providing consumers additional alternatives because “the internet is continuously evolving,” according to a blog post, and its search engine, which discloses your phone number or home address, may be both upsetting and hazardous.
A list of the categories of data that Google may delete.
Identity numbers (ID numbers) issued by governments, such as the US Social Security number, the Argentine tax identification number, and so on.
credit card numbers and bank account numbers
Photographs of signatures written by hand
Photographs of identification documents
Medical records (used to read “Confidential Personal Medical Records”), for example, are very personal, restricted, and formal records.
Contact information for individuals (physical addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses)
Credentials that are kept private
Google will also remove “non-consensual explicit or intimate personal images,” pornographic deepfakes or photoshops bearing your likeness, and referrals to sites with “exploitative removal practises,” according to a support website.
Giving Google a list of URLs that point to personal information and the search pages that display those links is known as making a request. Google will assess your request after you submit it.
According to the FAQ, an effort is made to “keep access to information where the material is assessed to be of public interest,” such as when the item is “topical,” “professionally relevant,” or provided by the government.
If Google decides that the links should be removed, this means that they will not appear in any search query or in searches that contain your name.
Google appears to have a high bar for what constitutes personal data, which sets it apart from the procedures it has had to adopt in areas like the EU in order to comply with so-called right-to-be-forgotten legislation.
Users can request that links they find unpleasant or irrelevant be removed under these laws, but that is not the case here – the rules Google imposed today only apply to links to extremely sensitive content.
It’s also unclear whether Google will eliminate websites that are specifically meant to sell people’s personal information.
Provided you’ve ever needed to seek for someone’s phone number, you may have come across one of these services that claimed to provide it if you signed up.
We enquired with Google about this and will update you once we receive a response.
To read our blog on “Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, lost more than $1 billion in Q1 of 2022” click here
