If you don’t want personal information like your phone number, email, physical address, and lots of other personal data about yourself from Google’s search results available to the public, you can do things to protect yourself. In response to the fact that many people don’t want to be found in a search, Google lets you request your addresses both physical and email and phone numbers be deleted from potential search results. The law is moving in the direction of pushing companies to increase privacy protections.
A major reason for safeguarding your personal information is “doxing” – a form of cyberbullying that uses sensitive or secret information, statements, or records for the harassment, exposure, financial harm, or other exploitation of targeted individuals. Removing info requires you to know if it is appearing only in Google search results or in results and on a separate website.
Information you may wish to protect from Google results includes:
- National ID numbers
- Bank accounts
- Credit card numbers
- Personal signatures
- Login info and credentials
- Medical records
- That you may have visited a site with explicit sexual content
Here’s how you will be able to remove your information yourself using the Google app using your phone number. Next to the search result, there may be a three-dot menu that enables you to delete your information by simply clicking what you want to be deleted. Google says this will happen in 2022.
In the meantime, you can go to Google’s privacy setting: (https://safety.google/privacy/privacy-controls/) Even if you remove your information from Google Search, it may still exist on the web. This means someone might still find your information that exists on a site, on social media, or on other search engines.
So you will need to contact the site’s webmaster and ask them to remove your content. Here are Google’s instructions:
How to contact a webmaster
There are several ways to contact the owner of a site:
- “Contact us” link: Find a “Contact us” link or an email address for the webmaster. This information is often on the site’s homepage.
- Find contact information using Whois: You can perform a Whois (who is?) search for the site owner using Google. Go to google.com and search for whois www.example.com. The email address to contact the webmaster can often be found under “Registrant Email” or “Administrative Contact.”
- Contact the site’s hosting company: The Whois search result usually includes information about who hosts the website. If you’re unable to reach the webmaster, try to contact the site’s hosting company.
If the webmaster has made the changes you requested to a site that appears in Google’s search results, you can request Google to remove outdated information by sending a webpage removal request. This tool works only for pages or images that have already been modified or removed from the web.
Here is what you will find on Google
Other information that Google will remove
If you are unable to have a website owner remove the content from the owner’s site, Google may remove personal information that creates significant risks of identity theft, financial fraud, or other specific harms. These articles link to the types of content Google will remove:
- Remove non-consensual explicit or intimate personal images from Google
- Remove involuntary fake pornography from Google
- Remove content about me on sites with exploitative removal practices from Google
- Remove select personally identifiable information (PII) or doxxing content from Google Search
- Remove images of minors from Google search results
- Remove irrelevant pornography from Google search results for my name
Google will remove content for specific legal reasons, such as DMCA copyright violation reports and child sexual abuse imagery. To request removal for a legal reason, use the legal troubleshooter form.
While most people may not fall victim to identity thieves or other abusers of our information, you may take comfort in knowing you can be safe rather than sorry.
A related problem happens when your Google phone number is stolen. Here is how to retrieve a stolen Google voice number.:
1. Sign in to voice.google.com and click Settings. Under Linked number, click New linked number.
2. Enter your mobile or landline phone number to link it to your Google Voice number.
3. If the number is for a landline, click the Verify by phone link and then click Call. Google Voice calls the phone number and gives the code. Enter the code and click Verify. If you are on a mobile device, click Send code, and Google Voice sends the code in a text message to the phone.
4. Click or tap the Claim button to link the number to your account.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has charged the data broker Kochava with exposing people to threats of stalking, discrimination, and violence by selling geolocation data revealing visits to sensitive locations, including reproductive health clinics.
- The data sold by Idaho-based Kochava can be used to identify specific places an individual visited by plotting latitude and longitude coordinates, the FTC alleged in its lawsuit.
- The location data is also not anonymized, meaning it is possible to identify a mobile device’s user or owner.
The FTC alleged that the sale of geolocation data puts consumers at risk by revealing information about visits to sensitive locations. In addition to reproductive health clinics, the agency said the data can be used to track visits to places of worship as well as other personal information.
Leave a Reply