The “Right to be Forgotten” is a privacy ruling that enables Europeans to delist certain URLs appearing in search results related to their name. In order to illuminate the effect this ruling has on information access, we conducted a retrospective measurement study of 3.2 million URLs that were requested for delisting from Google Search over five years. Our analysis reveals the countries and anonymized parties generating the largest volume of requests (just 1,000 requesters generated 16% of requests); the news, govern- ment, social media, and directory sites most frequently targeted for delisting (17% of removals relate to a requester’s legal history includ- ing crimes and wrongdoing); and the prevalence of extraterritorial requests. Our results dramatically increase transparency around the Right to be Forgotten and reveal the complexity of weighing personal privacy against public interest when resolving multi-party privacy conflicts that occur across the Internet. The results of our investigation have since been added to Google’s transparency report.
Five years of the Right to Be Forgotten
Available Media
Conference
Computer and Communications Security 2019
Authors
Theo Bertram , Elie Bursztein , Stephanie Caro , Hubert Chao , Rutledge Chin Feman , Peter Fleischer , Albin Gustafsson , Jess Hemerly , Chris Hibbert , Luca Invernizzi , Lanah Kammourieh Donnelly , Jason Ketover , Jay Laefer , Paul Nicholas , Yuan Niu , Harjinder Obhi , David Price , Andrew Strait , Kurt Thomas , Al Verney
Citation
Selected Press articles
Fortune | David Meyer | Feb 2018
People Have Asked Google to Remove 2.4 Million Links About Them. Here's What They Want to ForgetLe Monde | Perrine Signoret | Feb 2018
Droit à l’oubli : en presque quatre ans, Google a reçu plus de 650 000 demandesHeise Online | Daniel Berger | Feb 2018
Recht auf Vergessenwerden: Google erhielt bislang 2,4 Millionen URL-LöschanfragenThe Verge | Thuy Ong | Feb 2018
Google has received 2.4 million URL removal requests under EU 'right to be forgotten' laws