Most Google de-listing requests are from everyday folk, leaked data shows

It has pointed to “former politicians wanting posts removed that criticize their policies in office; serious, violent criminals asking for articles about their crimes to be deleted; bad reviews for professionals like architects and teachers; comments that people have written themselves (and now regret)”. Overall, Google’s system seems to be working and the community is appreciating the option of having unwanted information removed from Google search results.

As revealed by The Guardian, the source code of an * a href=”http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europeprivacy/” *archived version of the transparency report goes into more detail than the published report.

Google’s original report provided the number of requests received and granted, but did not describe the nature of the requests in detail.

The Guardian reports that “less than 5% of almost 220,000 individual requests made to Google to selectively remove links to online information concern criminals, politicians and high-profile public figures”.

With the right to be forgotten law now in full swing, Google has reportedly received hundreds and thousands of applications in the past few days with people wanting to get their named removed off the search engine. One request, for example, involved an individual who contracted HIV a decade ago, while another was from a woman whose name appeared in widely distributed articles about her husband’s death.

According to Google’s figures, the French were the most active requesters in Europe, filing 58,460 requests with Google to remove 197,526 URLs.

Among the request for personal information, almost half have been granted, while 37% have already been rejected, and the leftovers are pending.

These findings reflect that although Google does not publicly release these statistics about the right to be forgotten publicly, the company is doing its best to be objective and impartial with the requests.

A Google spokesman, in a statement, said the company has aimed to be as transparent as possible about its right to be forgotten decisions.

Google acknowledged the paper’s information was authentic, but cautioned that the accounts was merely part of a “test” that was discontinued “because the data was not reliable enough for publication”.