Forget.me: discover the reality of the right to be forgotten

What is the right to be forgotten?

The right to be forgotten is a concept that exists both in the physical marketplace and online. In our case, we are talking about the digital right to be forgotten.

It means removing private content that could harm you. If a compromising photo, an obsolete account, an old court ruling, or any other element from your past were to appear on the first page of search results, you can have the item removed or deindex the HTML link.

Link deindexing

That is, having a search result in which your first and last name appear removed. The content the link points to will not be deleted, but this operation will greatly limit access to it.

According to a Google transparency report (France), you have a 44% chance that your delisting request will succeed (as of 07/23/2018).

When it comes to the right to be forgotten, there are 3 main levers:

The right to object or refusing to let an organization collect, use, or share your personal information on the web. You can object if you want to free yourself from marketing calls, or if you want to be removed from an email prospecting database. This request is free and requires the organization in question to stop processing the data for the specified purposes. Since May 25, 2018, your request may be refused if your data is being processed in the public interest.

You will therefore be asked to state your intentions, except when they concern commercial prospecting, in which case no reason will be required.

The right to erasure or requesting the deletion of your personal information online,

• Concerning a child under 13, or under 16 who does not consent
• If the processing is unlawful
• If it does not concern the medical field for prevention and/or diagnosis purposes

If you take this step, the data controller must delete this information as quickly as possible, as stated in Article 17 of the GDPR. The company is not only required to process your request, but must also notify its partners and suppliers so they do the same.

Deleting the content is therefore the outcome of this process, whereas a delisting request results in the removal of the link to the content in question.

The right to delisting has recently become available thanks to the Court of Justice of the European Union. It involves removing search results associated with your identity that point to compromising personal information.

How do you exercise your right to be forgotten?

By directly contacting the manager or the data protection officer who holds your personal data, either online or by mail, and keeping a copy of your steps. In addition, Google, Bing and Yahoo offer an online form to fill out, following a case-by-case process based on the status of your request.

Tip: if you are refused for any claim, it is possible and advisable to refer the matter to the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, the French data protection authority) using the records you have kept.

Key milestones of the right to be forgotten from 2014 to 2018

May 13, 2014

Ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the case known as “Google Spain,” which allows internet users to ask search engines to delist information deemed “inadequate, irrelevant, or excessive.” The “right to be forgotten,” or more precisely the “right to delisting,” was launched.

May 29, 2014

Google puts its right-to-be-forgotten form online.

June 26, 2014

Google begins removing links from its search results in Europe

July 1, 2014

Google begins notifying webmasters of link deindexing

July 16, 2014

An American developer creates the site http ://hiddenfromgoogle.com/ to catalog the links deindexed from Google’s search engine

August 6, 2014

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, declares that the right to be forgotten is “deeply immoral” and announces that all Wikipedia links that are deindexed will be made public.

September 9, 2014

Google creates an advisory committee on the right to be forgotten

November 26, 2014

The G29 adopts guidelines to ensure a harmonized application of the right to be forgotten

February 6, 2015

Google’s advisory committee delivers its report

March 24, 2016

The CNIL fines Google 100,000 euros for refusing to extend right-to-be-forgotten URL deindexing beyond its European search engines. To dig deeper: The CNIL orders Google to broaden its right to be forgotten. Why does Google want borders for the right to be forgotten?

June 28, 2017

The Supreme Court of Canada requires Google to delist links worldwide in the Equustek case

June 28, 2017

In analyzing the dispute between the CNIL and Google, the Conseil d’État recommends consulting the CJEU to define the territorial scope of the right to be forgotten

Driven by the G29 (the group of European data protection authorities), the right to be forgotten has been protected and has matured. Lawmakers enshrined this right by including it in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR will be followed by the ePrivacy Regulation (the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation), which will continue to specify and reinforce the notion of “freely given consent.”