Google’s “Forget Me” forms requested by 12,000 Europeans Already!

Within less than 2 days of Google launching it’s Forget Me Forms online that allow individuals to have certain search results about them that may be outdated erased, 12,000 people have applied mostly Europe, who are the only ones with access to the forms right now. We are not sure when and if this will be rolled out to the entire world.

The form requires the name, address and a copy of a person’s identification card (for security and proof of identity reasons). The form then lets you put the URL(s)  that you want Google to ‘forget’, as well as why.

A lot of these first ‘Forget Me’ requests on the Google website are reported to be from people with criminal activities available online (as expected) but here’s what Google says about this :

‘A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines 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 When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional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.’

So you can stop right now in your tracks if you wanted your past erased! It’s not happening.

A lot of people’s information is stored online and Google is one of the most widely used search engines to find out this information. Just look at these statistics from November last year.

 

Let’s see how many more will send in reports.