Right To Be Forgotten

Thanks to an EU ruling on the “right to be forgotten”, you can now ask Google to pretend the item doesn’t exist.

Google has created an online form you can use to ask for links to personal data or posts about you to be removed from Google search results. This new form is in response to last week’s EU ruling on your “right to be forgotten“. Essentially the EU ruled that you have a right to ask Google to stop linking to anything that’s “inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.”

To ask for links to be removed, you have to supply the URL and explain how the links in question relate to you. To finalize a request, you have to give your name, contact email address, and a photo ID.

The form also allows you to make a request on behalf of someone else, allowing spouses, lawyers and other associates to ask for links about someone else to be removed.

If Google approves your request and removes the links in question, they will disappear from results in Google sites across the EU. However, in a statement to CNET, Google’s lawyers argue that applying the EU ruling to US publications in Google’s US search results would be “absurd.”

For more information, read:

• SearchEngineLand – How the form works
• TechCrunch – Right to be forgotten