You have even more power to protect your data
The duration of the internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can find and refer to events that took place years back; on the other hand, uploaded personal information is unlikely to disappear forever, whether it may compromise your data or not include malicious results that could harm your personal or professional status. So limiting the visibility of such content is crucial – this is where Google Search’s privacy policy comes in. It has been in place for years and now the company is expanding what content you can ask to be removed as part of a policy update.
For years, you could request the removal of Personally Identifiable Information from Search, such as bank account or credit card numbers that could be used for financial fraud, national identification numbers (like the US Social Security number), signatures, confidential medical records, or even doxxing cases where a third party publishes your information with malicious intent. With the new policy extension, Google announced that you will now be able to request the removal of personal contact information (such as phone numbers, email or physical addresses), ID document images, and personal login information when they appear in search results.
Google has a complete guide to removing personally identifiable information (PII) or doxxing content from Search. But the idea is that your request will be granted if it meets the stated requirements and the submitted URLs are covered by the company policy. However, you may be rejected even if you meet the requirements, such as if the source page is a news article with widely useful information or is a government or official website with public records.
That said, removing a Google search result does not delete the information from the web – you may need to contact the hosting site directly for it. But it helps for the most popular search engine to remove such data – keep in mind that people will still be able to find the original information if they dig. There is no such thing as being too careful. So take advantage of some of Google’s other features to manage your “My Activity” data or delete the last 15 minutes of search history.
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