The “right to be forgotten” is a common name for a right that was first established in May 2014 in the European Union as the result of a ruling by the European Court of Justice. The Court found that European data protection law gives individuals the right to ask search engines like Google to delist certain results for queries related to a person’s name. In deciding what to delist, search engines must consider if the information in question is “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive,” and whether there is a public interest in the information remaining available in search results.
In 2018, the EU adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR). Article 17 of the GDPR sets out a ‘right to erasure’ similar to the right the European Court of Justice had recognized under the older law that the GDPR replaced. Some countries outside the European Union have adopted similar laws as well.
