Google Brings The Right To Be Forgotten to The U.S.

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We started back in May of 2014 discussing the right to be forgotten. Back in in 2014, A European court, in an important test of the “right to be forgotten,” that Google must amend some of its search results at the request of ordinary people when they show links to outdated, irrelevant information.

We covered 5 more stories about different demands from different European countries.

Now the right to be forgotten is coming to the U.S. Evan Shuman wrote an excellent piece over at ComputerWorld.com that details the good and the bad. He also takes a look at what the slippery slope could look like down the road when more and more people send Google a takedown request.

From the article:

If you are worried about your online privacy, it might be of interest to you that Google has quietly brought its Google forget program to the U.S. It has made it quite simple, for the most part. Simply go to myactivity.google.com to see the history of your searches, YouTube viewing and everything else you do on Google platforms, and then be guided through the process of trimming that history.

I have looked at the myactivity page and it’s crazy seeing everything you ever watched on You Tube or searched on Google.

Comments

  1. John says

    To me this is close to being a bucket of “bull spit.”

    I guess I never really knew what the “right to be forgotten” really is, but from the phrase I always figured it must have something to do with a common sense notion and connotation of REAL PRIVACY, which means having google delete all references to you in search. If that’s not what this is, then I say BIG WHOOP.

    Just assume the government, ISPs, and a few other entities have total access to everything you ever do and live your life accordingly. It’s a bit ridiculous to think that this feature will really erase and eradicate what it purports to except in only the most meaninglessly limited sense.

  3. Andrew says

    What this article is about has nothing to do with the so-called “right to be forgotten”. This is just about deleting your history from your accounts, not removing yourself and mentions of you from search engines.