After Google, Bing complies with the decision of the Court of Justice of the EU and gives Europeans the opportunity to request the deletion of references to websites that mention their name.
Microsoft does not guarantee the withdrawal of results from Bing pages, citing the controversy surrounding the decision of the highest court in the EU and warning that the requests may be reviewed and its decisions revised.
- The page where the form to submit a request to be removed from Bing's indexes is published is located athttps://www.bing.com/webmaster/tools/eu-privacy-request
- The corresponding Google page is located athttps://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch#
What does the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union say about the right to request deletion from the results of online search engines?
According to the decision of 13 May 2014, the operator of a search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) is obliged to remove from the list of results displayed following a search carried out on the basis of a person’s name links to websites published by third parties containing information relating to that person – even where the publication of the information in question on those websites is itself lawful.
It must be examined, inter alia, whether the data subject has the right to have information relating to him or her no longer associated, at present, with his or her name in the list of results displayed following a search carried out on the basis of that name.
However, recognition of the right does not presuppose that the appearance of the information in question in the list of results causes harm to the data subject.
Given that the data subject may, on the basis of his fundamental rights under Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, request that the information in question cease to be made available to the general public due to its appearance in the aforementioned list of results, those rights in principle outweigh not only the economic interest of the operator of the search engine, but also the interest of the public in accessing that information in the context of a search based on the name of that subject.
- However, this does not apply where, for specific reasons, such as the role played by the subject in question in public life, it appears that the interference with the fundamental rights of the subjectis justified by the overriding public interest in access to the information in question as a result of its appearance on the aforementioned list.
Google, according to the BBC, has already received 70,000 requests to remove references to their names. However, searching for their names outside the EU will yield undesirable results for the person concerned.
- Indicative of the reactions that have been expressed regarding the decision - with the main argument that the truth should not be hidden, even when it is unpleasant - is that the references that are deleted are collected by volunteers on a website with the characteristic name hiddenfromgoogle.com, although the harvest is limited to just 9 entries.
The opinion of the Court of Justice of the EU was requested when a Spanish court was asked to rule on whether a Spaniard had the right to ask Google to delete references to a newspaper article that mentioned the auction of his house in 1998 - a case that was later settled.
Source: tech.in.gr
