Removing personal information from the internet

As our culture continues to move online, personal information about us that previously may have only been seen by our friends and family is increasingly shared in public spaces on the internet. What can you do if you search for your name on Google and find information you’d rather keep private? Or find yourself or home in Google Street View and want it blurred? Read on for instructions on how to get it removed. NOTE: If you want content removed from Google that’s located on a site that you do own, see Removing Pages from Google: A Comprehensive Guide for Content Owners for details. Why Google Generally Won’t Remove Your Personal Information Google’s core product, web search, simply indexes pages on the web and makes them available to searchers. Since Google doesn’t control the information on those pages, they will generally only remove them from their index if the site owner removes the pages from the site or uses standard methods of blocking the content … [Read more...] about How To Remove Your Personal Information From Google

A major ruling just knocked Google over the head, where Europe's top court, the The Court of Justice of the European Union, ruled that a person has the right to be "forgotten" and thus Google has to remove personal information from their search results when the person makes such a request."If, following a search made on the basis of a person's name, the list of results displays a link to a web page which contains information on the person in question, that data subject may approach the operator directly and, where the operator does not grant his request, bring the matter before the competent authorities in order to obtain, under certain conditions, the removal of that link from the list of results," the judges said.This obviously not only applies to Google, but Bing, Yahoo, Baidu and others that operate in the European Union. This is known as a bill named the "right to be forgotten."Google spokesman Al Verney said Tuesday's ruling was "disappointing ... for search engines and online … [Read more...] about European Court Requires Google To Delete Personal Info: Reputation Management Just Got Easier

Legal action is a fact of life in any society with a legal system. Running a business means you’re a potential target for legal action. So does existing as a citizen in that society. Even sovereign citizens are beholden to the law, even if they like to pretend they aren’t.In the past, it wasn’t necessarily all that difficult to hide the fact that you may have participated in legal action. If someone wanted to know, they had to look up the appropriate government office and check for any relevant records, a process that could take months and might miss something that exists.With the internet, however, so much more information is readily available. If someone wants to figure out if your business or your personal name has been involved in legal action, all they really have to do is Google it.In fact, if you’re a small business or an individual with relatively little information to your name, legal action is likely to be the top search result. After all, legal case … [Read more...] about How to Remove Legal Case Article Listings from Google

Google Chrome is stepping up its measures against “abusive” ads with a forthcoming browser update.Starting in December 2018, Chrome 71 will block all ads on a website if it detects there are too many misleading, or “abusive,” advertisements.Google defines abusive ads as those that are designed to intentionally mislead and trick users into taking an action.For example, these may include ads that trick users into clicking on them by mimicking system warnings.Another type of abusive ad is one with a “close” button that does not actually close the ad.Not only are these ads misleading, but they’re frequently used by scammers and phishing schemes to steal personal information.Here is a complete list of what Google considers abusive experiences created by misleading ads:Fake Messages: Ads or other elements that resemble notifications.Unexpected Click Areas: Clickable elements disguised as transparent backgrounds, non-visible page elements, or other … [Read more...] about Chrome to Remove All Ads From a Site if Too Many Are Misleading

Call it “privacy 2.0.” Last year Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously (and incorrectly) said that privacy is no longer a social norm. However one has only to witness the uproar this week over Facebook Messenger and the exposure of phone contacts to see that privacy isn’t dead. In Europe — Spain in particular — privacy is not only not fading away it’s making new inroads against competing interests. Earlier this year in March we wrote about a new principle being developed in Spain and Europe: “the right to be forgotten.” Specifically a Spanish court is asking Google to remove data about roughly 90 private individuals from its index. For various reasons these people have filed complaints with the Spanish Data Protection Agency asking that information about them be extracted from the index. Google is fighting the case and these requests; their implications are quite sweeping. The government of Spain backs the notion of a right to be … [Read more...] about Spain’s Radical Approach To Search And Personal Privacy