Right to be forgotten on search engines
The information available on internet search engines is public, which means that anyone can access it; however, when this information involves personal data, it may be considered a violation of the affected individual’s privacy and integrity if it is not done with their consent.
To prevent these negative situations, there are laws that regulate the dissemination of personal information. Furthermore, these regulations also allow individuals to request the removal of their information from public channels, but certain conditions must be met.
Below, we explain what the right to be forgotten entails using a real-life case, and we detail some key aspects to help you better understand this law.
A real-life case not approved by Congress
Earlier this year, a business owner requested that negative information about his professional activities be removed; this information had been posted by third parties on complaint websites in the United States and was damaging his business’s reputation, which is why he filed the complaint.
Although this appears to be a fair and assertive request on the part of the merchant, the Constitutional Court has upheld the right to be forgotten on Internet search engines and, after reviewing the case, has determined that there was no violation of the plaintiff’s privacy.
The full Court of Guarantees has issued a majority ruling overturning the Supreme Court’s decision—which had upheld another ruling by the National Court—noting that, in the merchant’s case, the merchant’s rights were not violated for various reasons.
First of all, his employment history cannot be considered information of public interest; furthermore, that information is quite old, so there is no justification for updating the links to access it.
For this reason, his right to be forgotten was denied, and the plenary session notes that this law must be read carefully to understand its proper application, at least in the case at hand.
What is the right to be forgotten?
In short, the right to be forgotten is an expression of the right of individuals to request that their name and personal information not appear on the internet. Specific conditions must be met in order to enforce this right.
The right to be forgotten as it applies to internet search engines is governed by Article 17 of the GDPR and applies to any web browsing platform, such as Google, Yahoo! or Bing.
Anyone seeking to exercise the right to be forgotten must understand that it applies only to the universal and indiscriminate dissemination of their data on search engines, not on social media. Furthermore, it may apply to outdated or irrelevant information that is no longer of public interest.
Will information disappear from the internet?
Many people believe that the right to be forgotten means that information about them will be deleted; however, that is not the case.
The May 13, 2014, ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union establishes that the law applies to searches conducted specifically using a person’s name. Similarly, the information will not be removed from the search engine’s indexes or from the source; it will simply no longer be visible.
This means that, since the source remains unchanged, the search results will continue to appear when other terms unrelated to the person in question are used.
This is why the merchant’s case was denied, and similar cases would likely yield a similar outcome. Therefore, it is important to understand the implications and application of the right to be forgotten.
