Google has bowed to the EU Court of Justice’s “right to be forgotten” ruling by setting up a service to allow Europeans to make a request for personal data to be removed from online search results.
The company said it would assess each application and balance “privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information”. It claimed links to “irrelevant” and outdated information should be erased on request, it said.
The online form which applicants must complete states: “When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information.”
Google said it would look at information about “financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials” while deciding whether to proceed.
However, the Information Commissioner’s Office has already warned it could be many months before any disputes about take-down requests are dealth with.
Last week, deputy Commissioner David Smith said the ICO and other data protection authorities would first need to issue guidance, with discussions among its European counterparts planned for next month.
He added: “We won’t be ruling on any complaints until the search providers have had a reasonable time to put their systems in place and start considering requests.”
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