Protect your personal data — update Google’s removal mechanism

The company Google unveiled an updated Results about you tool that helps users quickly track and remove personal information from search results. For example, if your phone number or address is publicly available, the service will help you quickly submit a removal request.

The official Google blog post says about it.

How removing personal data in search will work

Thanks to the new convenient registration section and the possibility of proactive monitoring, Google will warn the user if new results with personal data appear.

The procedure for removing information from a search has now been simplified — by clicking on the three dots next to the result, you can see an updated menu that explains what content is to be removed. From there, you can make a request in a few clicks.

There are three options for requesting the removal of personal information:

• "It shows my personal info and I don’t want it there" — allows you to request the removal of data such as phone number, email, home address, credit card numbers, login details, etc. Google will review the request and may remove the result.
• "I have a legal removal request" — ​​used if the content violates Google’s product policies.
• "It’s outdated and I want to request a refresh" — if the page has been updated, but the old version is still showing in search results, you can request to update the result.

Sometimes, you need to not only remove information but also update outdated data in the search. If, for example, content with your information has been removed or changed on the site, but the search engine has not yet updated the results, you can click on the three dots and request a re-scan of the page. After that, Google will re-index the resource and display the most current information.

As a reminder, Google plans to significantly update access to email. The company is going to abandon the usual SMS confirmations and use QR codes for authentication.

We also wrote that Google is introducing video transcription capabilities with a search function to Google Drive. Starting from February 24, Google Workspace users will receive access to the new feature.