Privacy has become a big concern for netizens. Nowadays, one can also find several kinds of personal information in Google search results.
To help people protect their privacy, Alphabet Inc’s Google has finally started to take requests for removal of results containing information like phone numbers, home addresses and email accounts, a Reuters report said.
In an exclusive interview to Reuters, Michelle Chang, global policy lead, Google search, said, “Research has told us there’s a larger amount of personally identifiable information that users consider as sensitive. They are increasingly unwilling to tolerate this content online.”
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This move seems to have indicated a shift in its stance between personal privacy and access to information.
The rise in demand from users and development of norms related to threats posed by easy access to contact information has led to the expansion of removal policies globally, Google said on Wednesday.
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Till now, Google used to accept requests only to remove webpages, which shared contact information along with some sort of threat or asked for payment for removal.
In recent years, the most used internet search tool has got tens of thousands of such requests annually. It had approved about 13% of them only.
As per the company, it processes requests within a few days.
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(With inputs from agencies)
