Google accidentally reveals data on 'right to be forgotten,' private information requests

New Delhi: Google has accidentally revealed crucial data on information requests it receives from people, which includes those of a private and personal nature.

The Guardian discovered the data hidden in the source code on Google’s own transparency report that reveals the scale and nature of the data requests it receives.

The revealed data shows that 95 per cent of Google’s privacy requests are from the general public who want to protect personal and private information, including right to be forgotten requests where a member of the deceased’s family wants online links to information about the said person to be taken down from the web.

It was found that less than 5 per cent of nearly 220,000 individual requests made to Google to selectively remove links to online information concern criminals, politicians, and high-profile public figures; the rest of the requests are from everyday members of the public and constitute more than three-quarters of all requests to date.

Some of the requests concern a woman whose name appeared in prominent news articles after her husband died, another seeking removal of her address, and an individual who contracted HIV a decade ago.

The underlying source code of the report has since been updated to remove the breakdown of the request details.

The compliance rate and the nature of requests vary from one nation to the other; with France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and Cyprus making most of the private information requests; and Italy’s second largest issue being serious crime-related requests.

Google said in a statement: “We’ve always aimed to be as transparent as possible about our right to be forgotten decisions. The data the Guardian found in our Transparency Report’s source code does of course come from Google, but it was part of a test to figure out how we could best categorise requests. We discontinued that test in March because the data was not reliable enough for publication. We are however currently working on ways to improve our transparency reporting.”