How to remove personal in­for­ma­tion from Google

In May 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Lux­em­bourg issued the “right to be forgotten”. This stip­u­lates that search engines such as Google must remove search results if they involve sensitive personal data which is incorrect, excessive, outdated or has become ir­rel­e­vant.

How to delete personal in­for­ma­tion from Google

If your request falls under the right to be forgotten, you can get started with the following form on Google.

Step 1: Open the personal data removal form in Google.

Step 2: Enter the country where the law is applied. In most cases, this is the country where you reside.

Step 3: Now enter your name and email address. You can also submit the form on behalf of another person. Simply specify your legal re­la­tion­ship to the other person.

Step 4: Now enter the websites you wish to have removed from search results. To do this, provide the URL that you want removed from Google search results If you want to report multiple addresses, use multiple lines, with one URL per line.

Step 5: Specify why the link(s) should be removed from search results. You must enter a reason for each URL you specify. Again, use one line per reason.

Step 6: Now enter the name under which you (or the person for whom you’re making the request) can be found on Google.

Step 7: Finally, confirm you agree to the data pro­cess­ing for this request and that all data provided are correct. Now enter the current date and your name, and then submit the ap­pli­ca­tion.

To remove personal in­for­ma­tion from Google search, the search giant provides multiple forms. These differ according to the reason for entry removal. In addition to the right to be forgotten, outdated data or non-con­sen­su­al pornog­ra­phy may also be removed. Google has created the help page “Remove your personal in­for­ma­tion from Google” where you can find links to the relevant forms.

Why is Google required to delete entries in the EU?

In 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in favor of a Spanish citizen who had asked Google to delete links to articles about him. The in­for­ma­tion in the newspaper article in question had long been out of date and the plaintiff felt it was damaging to his rep­u­ta­tion. The ECJ agreed and Google had to remove the links.

As a result, the right to be forgotten was in­cor­po­rat­ed into the European General Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR). Article 17 of the GDPR states that people have the right to erase their personal data from the internet to prevent its further dis­sem­i­na­tion.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, the U.S. does not recognize the right to be forgotten as it in­ter­feres with first amendment rights and freedom of ex­pres­sion. However, in April 2022, Google added an option for U.S. citizens to request removal of their personal in­for­ma­tion.

What type of content can U.S. citizens request Google to delete from search results?

Google isn’t obliged to comply with every deletion request. Es­pe­cial­ly in the case of public figures (such as politi­cians or other celebri­ties), society’s interest in in­for­ma­tion may outweigh the right to be forgotten. It should also be noted that this right only applies to people; links to in­for­ma­tion about companies aren’t ap­plic­a­ble.

U.S. citizens can ask Google to remove:

• Personal in­for­ma­tion such as phone numbers, email addresses or physical addresses
• Hand­writ­ten sig­na­tures
• Intimate personal or non-con­sen­su­al images/photos, images of minors
• Fake/ir­rel­e­vant pornog­ra­phy
• Ex­ploita­tive content
• Per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able or doxxing content

Can you delete entries yourself?

You cannot remove links yourself. To remove links, you must submit a link deletion request to Google. As such, waiting times are to be expected as Google reviews your request.

However, you also have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to contact the operators of websites directly. Once the website operator removes the requested in­for­ma­tion, Google search results will update ac­cord­ing­ly. To speed up the process of changing the search results, you can use the Google request form to remove outdated content.