Google Removes California News Links to Test New Law

Australians Now Have the Power to Remove Personal Entries from Google

May 7, 2024 TruthUSA

The ‘results about you’ tool allows users to see if they appear in search results and enables them to request the removal of personally identifiable information.

Australians can now easily locate where they are mentioned online and request the removal of entries about them from search results.

This feature is only applicable to content containing personally identifiable information such as phone numbers, emails, or home addresses. The “results about you” tool was launched on May 8 in honor of Privacy Awareness Week.

Users can also subscribe to receive updates whenever a new entry mentioning them is discovered, although this was already possible using the Google Alert feature.

When Google receives a removal request, they evaluate the webpage’s content to ensure it does not restrict access to other broadly useful information, such as news articles,” the company stated.

“Additionally, removing contact information from Google search does not eliminate it from the web. Therefore, if you are comfortable, you may want to directly contact the hosting site,” Google noted.

Google’s director of government affairs for Australia, Lucinda Longcroft, expressed hope that “tools like this will assist Australians in better protecting their information and online identity, as well as guarding against doxing, cyber threats, and financial fraud.”

The government intends to introduce legislation to prohibit the online release of private information with malicious intent—known as doxing—as part of its Privacy Act reforms.

Unlike the “right to be forgotten” laws in the EU, which Google has contested unsuccessfully, this amendment will focus solely on information containing an individual’s private details and exclude media reporting.