The big news is coming from the biggest tech giant Google, the company is now letting users request to remove their phone numbers, physical addresses, and email addresses from the company’s search results.
“The internet is always evolving—with information popping up in unexpected places and being used in new ways—so our policies and protections need to evolve, too,” says Michelle Chang, Google’s global policy lead for search.
Wednesday’s announcement expands personally identifiable information to include “personal contact info,” including physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. In addition, you can request that Google pull any of your login credentials from its search results.
Using the tool could help users protect themselves from computer hacks and identity theft schemes. You can start a removal request by visiting Google’s support page on the topic, which will ask for the URL that contains the personally identifiable information. Users can submit up to 1,000 URLs on the form.
If Google does grant the request, it can decide to remove the URL containing the sensitive personal information from all search results. In other cases, it will only remove the URL for search queries that include your name. “This can happen when the policy violating information on a page is accompanied by content that is of public interest or has content about other individuals,” Google added.
“If the website owner has removed the information, it will eventually be removed from Google Search as part of our regular updating process,” the company said.
You can now request removal of personal contact information like a phone number, email address, or physical address, as well as login info, from Google Search. Learn more: https://t.co/ZTFRtWlNKz
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 27, 2022