Google expands your tools to remove from your results Search sensitive information that affects its users. The company announced this Tuesday that its function ‘Results about you’ now allows you to request the deletion of documents such as your driver’s license, passport, and Social Security number, as well as your telephone number and address..
Once you enter your data in ‘Results about you’, Google will show you which links in its search engine contain them and will give you the option to request their removal. The company ensures that the information provided to the tool is protected with ‘advanced encryption’. You can also activate warnings to notify you when it detects new results with your personal data, although Google clarifies that using the tool does not delete information ‘from the web completely’, only as far as Search is concerned. The update begins to arrive in the United States in the coming days and will later spread to other regions.
It is not the only privacy improvement that Google has announced. The company also reinforces measures to limit the dissemination of explicit images without consent in search results. From now on, it is possible request the removal of a photo from the search engine itself.
To do this, simply open the menu of the three points on the image, select ‘delete results’ and check the option ‘Shows a sexual image of me’. Google will ask you to provide some details in a form.
Additionally, you can request the removal of multiple images at once and activate protections so that Google proactively filters out similar results in the future. This non-consensual content usually includes images of a person shared online, manipulated images or explicit deepfakes generated by AI.
Google will send you email notifications to keep you up to date on the status of your application. The company will remove images from search results if your personal content policies are violated. You or your representative can initiate the request, as long as you are the subject of the image. Image removal requests are tracked through the dedicated ‘Results about you’ center.
‘We hope this new removal process will reduce the burden faced by victims of non-consensual explicit images,’ the company notes in a blog post. Contrary to the previous case, the function will start roll out to most countries in the coming days.