Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

You have the right to be forgotten 41.3 per cent of the time says Google

Transparency report details erasure efforts a year after EU forget-me-yes edict

Google has published some details of its efforts to comply with the Court of Justice of the European Union's “right to be forgotten” decision that compelled search engines to remove links if citizens ask them to do so.

In a new transparency report published a year to the day after the ruling, Google reveals it's received 254,271 removal requests and checked out 922,638 URLs.

Of that 922,638, 41.3 per cent were expunged.

Google's offered examples of the requests it's received, including several from the UK. One details “A doctor requested we remove more than 50 links to newspaper articles about a botched procedure.” The Court of Justice outlined a public interest test in the right to be forgotten regime and Google appears to have decided that in this case removing links was not justified. It therefore decided “Three pages that contained personal information about the doctor but did not mention the procedure have been removed from search results for his name. The rest of the links to reports on the incident remain in search results.”

Google also published the data below, as the ten sites listed collectively house eight per cent of all URLs requested for a one-way trip to the memory hole.

google's top 10 right to be forgotten request sites

®

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like