The ’results about you' tool allows users to see whether they show up in search results, and request the removal of personally identifiable information.
Australians can now easily find where they’re mentioned online and seek to have entries about them removed from search results.
This is limited to material containing personally identifiable information such as their phone number, email, or home address. The “results about you” feature was launched on May 8 to mark Privacy Awareness Week.
People can also subscribe to receive updates whenever a new entry mentioning them is found, though this was also possible before using the Google Alert feature.
When a removal application is received, Google will evaluate the content of the webpage to ensure that it’s not “limiting the availability of other information that is broadly useful, for instance in news articles,” the company said in a statement.
“And of course, removing contact information from Google search doesn’t remove it from the web, which is why you may wish to contact the hosting site directly, if you’re comfortable doing so.”
Google’s director of government affairs for Australia, Lucinda Longcroft, said the company hoped that “tools like this will help Australians to better safeguard their information and identity online and help people to protect themselves from doxing as well as cyber and financial fraud.”
The government has said it will introduce legislation to outlaw the release of private information online with an intent to cause harm, known as doxing, as part its reform of the Privacy Act.
Unlike “right to be forgotten” laws which have been adopted in the EU—and unsuccessfully challenged by Google—the amendment would be restricted to information which contained a person’s private information, and specifically exclude media reporting.
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Google said it supports the government’s efforts.
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