The Government is reportedly drawing up plans for a scheme which will offer advice – to both consumers and brand owners – on how to delete embarrassing or malicious postings about them appearing in search engines and on social networks.
According to reports, the plan has been hatched by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, after a meeting with Facebook, Google and other online companies. He is understood to have instructed officials to study a scheme set up by the Norwegian government, DeleteMe.no, with a view to launching a similar scheme in the UK.
MPs are understood to be coming under increasing pressure to provide detailed advice on how to tackle malicious material appearing on the Net.
At the moment, it is virtually impossible for people or brands to remove stories from Google search results unless they can persuade the original author to delete the article or obtain a court order, which can be very expensive. Even then, it can take a while for the item to be removed.
People are increasingly turning to third-party “reputation laundering” companies, such as Abine (http://www.abine.com/index.php) which charge thousands of pounds to scrub out postings.
