Right to be forgotten one year on – what’s changed? (infographic)

13 May 2015

Google’s new transparency report regarding the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling has shown that in the vast majority of cases – 70pc – Google has refused to remove search results as requested by affected parties.

A year on from the Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja González case, which ruled that a person may be entitled to remove Google search results if they feel it is not in the public interest for them to be public, the company has released its latest transparency report charting the number of requests made within the EU.

According to its figures, of the nearly 1m (922,638) URL removal requests received by Google over the past year, 41.3pc were approved by Google.

This almost averages to four URL removal requests per person or group, with the search giant having received a total of 254,171 requests.

The rate at which the company is processing the vast number of data requests has sped up significantly over the past year with each individual case being processed every 16 days compared with the 56 it took during the first few months of its initiation.

While Google’s official number puts its rejections at 41.3pc, the firm behind forget.me – Reputation VIP – which orchestrates people’s requests to remove their information, say it is actually closer to 70pc based of the number of rejections by individuals.

The firm go on to detail that the majority of requests (58.7pc) were to do with invasion of privacy, with the second largest identifiable topic being defamation and insult at 11.2pc.

Of the top 15 countries to make requests, Ireland is ranked 13th – or 1pc of the total number – with 539, on a par with Italy and above Norway, while the UK tops the chart, accounting for 26.5pc of requests totalling 13,760.

Forget-me-EU-infographic

Forgetmenot bunch image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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