Are you tired of your personal information being available on search engines? Let’s be honest. Who isn’t? Well, now Google is updating its privacy tool to make it more powerful and easier than ever to remove your personal information from their search engine.
Google's 'Results about You' tool was rolled out last year. Google says it's been working hard to make things better since it first launched its software.
It launched with the intention of allowing people to request the removal of personal information that pops up during Google searches. Personal information can include a phone number, email address, physical address or even unwanted images.
Now, it is not possible to block your name on Google, or any other search engine such as Bing or Yahoo. However, you can request the removal of Google search results that divulge your personal information.
It's easier than ever to get your personal information removed from Google results. (CyberGuy.com)
Easily remove your personal information from Google
The biggest change is that now you can find your information on Google without going through the hassle of searching for it yourself.
You simply enter your information, and the dashboard will compile a list of sites that contain any matches. You can then submit a request to have the information removed pronto after reviewing these pages. On Google’s hub, you can view the status of all the requests you have made.
Stay up-to-date with Google’s new push notifications for personal information
Another addition is you can now receive push notifications that alert you when new results of your information pop up on Google. This makes it much easier for you as you don’t have to constantly reenter your information in the dashboard to check for matches.
These notifications will tell how many search results on the internet show your personal information. You can then take action on this information and request that the details be taken off the internet.
Expanded removal guidelines
BEST PRIVATE AND SAFE ALTERNATIVES TO BIG TECH GOOGLE
Google’s policies around the "results about you" feature have also shifted slightly. The removal guidelines used to only focus on information that was posted without consent. Now, they have been expanded, and personal info that you posted intentionally but later wanted to be removed is eligible for removal.
Commercialized information does not fall under this category. However, there are some search results Google will not be able to remove, so be aware not all your requests will be successful. Google also will never take action against any results from governments or educational institutions.
New parental control feature & SafeSearch's photo blurring
There are also new, easier-to-find parental control features and the addition of SafeSearch’s photo blurring, which will blur out potentially explicit images. If you are worried about your family being exposed to inappropriate content, you can now preemptively censor certain things.
How to request Google to remove your personal information without an account
TEN TRICKS FOR DOING AN EFFECTIVE GOOGLE SEARCH
Here's the best part. You don’t even need a Google account to get rid of your own info. There’s a new form you can use all on its own to make your request. Once you send it off, Google will shoot you an email so you can keep tabs on how things are going. You’ll know if they supply the green light to remove your info. If you do decide to log in, you can also see the progress on the dashboard.
How to access Google’s ‘Results about you’ dashboard with an account
Currently, this feature in Google’s "Results about you" dashboard is only available for usage in the U.S. via the Google app or Google site. Here's how to access it:
Access through the Google App
- Click on the Google App.
- Tap on your profile picture in the top-right corner.
- Then scroll down and select ‘Results about you’ from the menu. Familiarize yourself with the steps you need to take to remove your personal info on Google.
- Then at the top of the page, search your name or whatever other information you want to be removed.
BIG TECH TOOK YOUR DATA TO TRAIN AI. WE'RE SUING THEM FOR IT
- Click on three dots next to the search result in which you want to be removed.
- Select Remove result on the top of the page and then select whichever reason you have for removing the result.
- Enter the details asked so Google can see whether your request matches with the result, then select Continue at the bottom.
- Finally, click Send request.
- Google will contact you when it's checked your request, letting you know whether it has been approved or denied. You can also view your current requests by checking your "results about you" dashboard.
Access through Google's site
You can click on the link here. You can follow these steps to submit a request to remove any of your information from the web:
- Go to Google Search .
- Search your name or whatever other information you want to be removed.
- Click on three dots next to the search result in you want to be removed.
Google's new feature to remove personal information from search results (CyberGuy.com)
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
- Select Remove result on the top of the page and then select whichever reason you have for removing the result.
Here's how to request getting your personal information off Google. (CyberGuy.com)
- Enter the details asked so Google can see whether your request matches with the result, then select Continue at the bottom.
Fill in the details to inform Google of the issue. (CyberGuy.com)
- Finally, click Send request.
Here's the final step to filling out the Google request. (CyberGuy.com)
- Google will contact you when it's checked your request, letting you know whether it has been approved or denied. You can also view your current requests by checking your "results about you" dashboard.
MORE: SAY HELLO TO GOOGLE WALLET'S 6 AMAZING NEW FEATURES FOR ANDROID PHONES
Invest in removal services
In addition to Google's "Results about you" tool, I recommend you invest in a removal service to get your personal information off the hundreds of people search sites out there. While no service promises to remove all your data from the internet, having a removal service is great if you want to constantly monitor and automate the process of removing your information from hundreds of sites continuously over a longer period of time.
See my tips and best picks for removing yourself from the internet by going to CyberGuy.com/Delete
Kurt’s key takeaways
It is great to see Google making an effort to increase the safety of its search experience. While removal was possible before, it certainly was not easy.
This is an improved update to their 'Results about You' tool along with the new alerts warning you of your information appearing on the web. It is important to remember that just because your information has been removed from Google, it doesn’t mean all of your information is removed from other parts of the web.
Why do you think Google is making this move to make internet safety more accessible? And do you see this as the start of a potential trend with other engines and sites? Let us know by writing us at CyberGuy.com/Contact
For more of my security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to CyberGuy.com/Newsletter
Copyright 2023 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.
We've now closed our evidence search service.
We’ve taken this decision after reviewing the wide range of services we currently provide, so we can focus on delivering the priorities outlined in our 5-year strategy.
If you’ve any queries, please contact nice@nice.org.uk.
Other services you can still use
NHS OpenAthens
You can access a range of bibliographical databases with your NHS OpenAthens account. Sign in to see what you can access.
You can access bibliographic databases from the providers' websites. For example:
Health Education England provides links to these databases and materials to help you search effectively.
You will need to sign in to the databases with your NHS OpenAthens account.
NHS Knowledge and Library Hub
Visit Health Education England’s NHS Knowledge and Library Hub for:
- A single search of all the knowledge and library resources available to you, whether purchased nationally or locally.
- Links to database provider websites for advanced literature searching.
- A browsable list of all the journals you can access.
- A list of all resources purchased nationally for the NHS in England.
You'll need to sign in with your NHS OpenAthens account to access the resources.
Help and support
For help and support using the resources listed here, or for further information, contact your local healthcare library. You can find details in the Health Library and Information Service Directory.
This book provides a practical guide to implementing knowledge and information initiatives in the workplace. Drawing on case studies from practitioners in a range of different work environments, it will outline best practice, pitfalls and advice on a range of topics, including making the business case, audits, establishing communities of practice, building knowledge bases and knowledge captureMany workplaces have moved from providing research support to knowledge services. Practical Knowledge and Information Management will help professionals provide those services, to Boost existing techniques for knowledge sharing and capture and to help transition from the more traditional library model. Chapters will be themed and based on case studies drawn from across the knowledge management community in the UK, Ireland and North America.Although not an edited collection, the book draws on contributions from workplaces in both the public and private sectors, including law, finance, Government, non-profit, academic and business. It will be useful practicing for information professionals with responsibility for knowledge and information management activity and will suit both experienced professionals, those new to the area, and students on relevant courses/new professionals looking to increase their knowledge.
The hallway is bathed in harsh white, a figment of LEDs. Along the walls, doors recede endlessly into the distance. Each flaunts a crown of blue light at its base, except for the doors you’ve walked through before, which instead emit a deep purple. But these are but specks of sand in the desert of gateways.
You are searching for something.
You prepare yourself for an arduous journey. Before the first door you come upon a pedestal. The box that lies on the pedestal gives airs of gildedness despite being as plain as the walls that surround it. It isn’t adorned with a title, but its name echoes in your mind, intuitively: the Answer Box. A plaque reads:
I have crawled through each and every door. Not just the doors in this hallway, but the doors in every hallway in existence, the doors within doors, as well as some doors that I dare not show you, doors that would make you flee in terror. I have seen everything. I am impartial. I have your best interests at heart. I understand what it is you want to know and it is knowable. I have the answer that you seek.
Your finger caresses the latch.
Cataloging the web was doomed from the start. In the summer of 1993, Matthew Gray created the World Wide Web Wanderer (WWWW), arguably the first internet bot and web crawler. During its first official attempt to index the web, the Wanderer returned from its expedition with 130 URLs. But even in the baby years of the internet, this list was incomplete.
To understand how a simple web crawler works, imagine making a travel itinerary that contains three cities: New York, Tokyo, Paris. While visiting each destination, listen for any mentions of other places and add those to your itinerary. Your world crawl is complete when you have visited all of the cities on your ever growing list. Will you have seen a lot of places by the end of your journey? Undoubtedly. But will you have seen the whole world? Almost certainly not. There will always be cities, or entire webs of cities, that are effectively invisible to this process.
A web crawler similarly consults a list of URLs and recursively visits any links it sees. But the resulting index should not be confused with a comprehensive directory of the internet, which does not exist.
I have a theory of technology that places every informational product on a spectrum from Physician to Librarian:
The Physician's primary aim is to protect you from context. In diagnosing or treating you, they draw on years of training, research, and personal experience, but rather than presenting that information to you in its raw form, they condense and synthesize. This is for good reason: When you go to a doctor’s office, your primary aim is not to have your curiosity sparked or to dive into primary sources; you want answers, in the form of diagnosis or treatment. The Physician saves you time and shelters you from information that might be misconstrued or unnecessarily anxiety-provoking.
In contrast, the Librarian's primary aim is to point you toward context. In answering your questions, they draw on years of training, research, and personal experience, and they use that to pull you into a conversation with a knowledge system, and with the humans behind that knowledge system. The Librarian may save you time in the short term by getting you to a destination more quickly. But in the long term, their hope is that the destination will reveal itself to be a portal. They find thought enriching, rather than laborious, and understand their expertise to be in wayfinding rather than solutions. Sometimes you ask a Librarian a question and they point you to a book that is an answer to a question you didn't even think to ask. Sometimes you walk over to the stacks to retrieve the book, only for a different book to catch your eye instead. This too is success to the Librarian.
KMWorld 2022
Discover the untapped potential of knowledge at the world's leading knowledge management event. Join the brightest minds in knowledge and information management at KMWorld 2022 this November in Washington, D.C. Get practical advice, hear inspiring thought leadership, and attend in-depth training and workshops on how KM and related disciplines can provide enormous value for your organization and transform your business.
KMWorld is designed for CIOs & CKOs, IT managers, Knowledge Managers, Information Managers and Professionals, Executive Management, Intranet Managers, Information Architects, Content Managers, Customer Experience Professionals, Scientists & Engineers, Educators & Researchers, and anyone who wants to run an innovative, knowledge-driven enterprise.
KMWorld 2022 is a part of a unique program of four co-located conferences this November. Please take an opportunity to explore these events and their content below, then choose a Platinum Pass to gain full access to these distinct, but synergistic, conferences.
Enterprise Search & Discovery
The Enterprise Search & Discovery Conference is the only conference dedicated to exploring this critical business and technical challenge and opportunity. Discover how to design, build, and manage better search and discovery to help extract critical knowledge and business value from your organizational data. Join us as we explore how to provide transformative enterprise search and information discovery across your organization.
Enterprise Search & Discovery is designed for Search Managers, line-of-business departmental managers, IT managers, Information & Knowledge Architects, Compliance and Legal Officers, and anyone responsible for organizing, managing, and retrieving internal and/or external information.
Taxonomy Boot Camp
Taxonomies are all about creating structures that bring data and information to life. Taxonomy Boot Camp is the only conference dedicated to taxonomy building and management. Join us as we explore the successes, challenges, and methods of putting taxonomies to work for your organization.
Taxonomy Boot Camp is designed for Taxonomists and Ontologists, Information Architects, Content Managers, Knowledge Engineers, Intranet Professionals, Content Classification Specialists, Information Professionals, Information Scientists, and anyone responsible for classifying, organizing, or managing content.
Text Analytics Forum
Text Analytics has the ability to add depth, meaning, and intelligence to any organization’s most under-utilized resource – text. Through text analytics, enterprises can unlock a wealth of information that would not otherwise be available. Join us as we explore the power of text analytics to provide relevant, valuable, and actionable data for enterprises of all kinds.
Text Analytics Forum is designed for Text Analysts, Content Managers, Data Analysts and Scientists, Knowledge Managers, CIOs and CKOs, Information and Knowledge Architects, Taxonomists and Ontologists, Business and Competitive Intelligence Pros, and anyone involved in organizing information or extracting valuable data from text.
Google has announced several updates to Search aimed at making it easier for people to control information about them that appears in results. The company released a tool last year to help people take down search results containing their phone number, home address or email. Now, the company has updated the "results about you" tool to make it more effective.
A new dashboard will become available in the coming days that will let you know when such personal information pops up in Search. When you get an alert, you'll swiftly be able to ask Google to remove those results.
Earlier this year, the company debuted a Google One feature that can scour the dark web to see if your information has been included in a data breach. This "results about you" update seems to work in a similar way. The fact that it proactively finds results containing your personal info and helps you remove them should make it easier to protect your privacy.
You can access the tool from the Google app by tapping your profile photo and selecting "results about you" or from a dedicated webpage the company has set up. It's available in the US in English for now, but Google plans to offer the tool in other languages and regions soon.
Along similar lines, Google is updating a system that aids users in taking down explicit photos of them. The company has long provided the option for people to request the removal of non-consensual explicit images from search results. It's now expanding that policy to include consensual imagery.
Perhaps you uploaded explicit content of yourself to a website at one point, but decide you no longer want it to be available. If you delete the imagery from that website, you can now ask Google to remove it from search results if it has been published elsewhere without permission. The company notes that the policy doesn't apply to any content you're still commercializing.
It's not exactly rare for owners of websites that deal in explicit imagery to report content from elsewhere. Removing such content from Google Search results won't scrub it from the web entirely, but that may make it more difficult for people to find. You can search for "request removals" in the Google help center to get started.
On top of all that, Google is rolling out updates for parental controls and SafeSearch. Starting this month, Google is blurring explicit imagery (which it defines as adult or graphic violent content) in search results by default, a move it announced earlier this year. You'll be able to turn off SafeSearch blurring from your settings, unless a school network admin or a guardian has locked the setting on your account.
Last but not least, it'll now be much easier to access parental controls from Search. Punch in a query like “google parental controls” or “google family link” and you'll see an information box that explains how to adjust the settings.
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We've now closed our evidence search service.
We’ve taken this decision after reviewing the wide range of services we currently provide, so we can focus on delivering the priorities outlined in our 5-year strategy.
If you’ve any queries, please contact nice@nice.org.uk.
Other services you can still use
NHS OpenAthens
You can access a range of bibliographical databases with your NHS OpenAthens account. Sign in to see what you can access.
You can access bibliographic databases from the providers' websites. For example:
Health Education England provides links to these databases and materials to help you search effectively.
You will need to sign in to the databases with your NHS OpenAthens account.
NHS Knowledge and Library Hub
Visit Health Education England’s NHS Knowledge and Library Hub for:
- A single search of all the knowledge and library resources available to you, whether purchased nationally or locally.
- Links to database provider websites for advanced literature searching.
- A browsable list of all the journals you can access.
- A list of all resources purchased nationally for the NHS in England.
You'll need to sign in with your NHS OpenAthens account to access the resources.
Help and support
For help and support using the resources listed here, or for further information, contact your local healthcare library. You can find details in the Health Library and Information Service Directory.
