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Gone baby gone: Google receives 12k ‘removal requests’ in 48 hours
Privacy settings, a hot-button topic many websites do their best to avoid, get the royal treatment from Google as a new “right to be forgotten” form launched earlier this week for EU Google users. Those who value their secrecy can fill in the form to have results which are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed,” removed if and when Google flips the approve switch.
Google launched the option late last week and in a single day, more than 12 000 requests were processed, reports news network ABC.
The form follows an earlier, rather exciting ruling by the European Court of Justice which declared that internet users have the “right to be forgotten” and at a rate of over 20 requests per minute, Google anonymity has been long sought-after it seems. Google says that it will have to balance the public and private interest when evaluating the request of each individual user. As it stands, only 28 European countries will benefit from the great user-information purge.
The seven-person ruling committee which includes Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and Google’s search genius Eric Schmidt will assess each individual request to ensure that stories that fulfill the needs of public interest aren’t removed, amongst many other stipulations.
“The court’s ruling requires Google to make difficult judgments about an individual’s right to be forgotten and the public’s right to know. We’re creating an expert advisory committee to take a thorough look at these issues. We’ll also be working with data protection authorities and others as we implement this ruling,” says a Google spokesperson.
Non-EU Googlers best remain cautious though, as any remove request will only delete information from European Google, not the mighty Google.com reports The Next Web. With pedophiles and politicians requesting information wipes, it seems that the unsavoury denizens of the internet are finally getting the privacy they’ve long wanted.
