> Last year, we launched the Results about you tool to make it easy for you to request the removal of search results that contain your personal phone number, home address or email, right from the Google app or however you access Search

Why would you be indexing this information in the first place?

Because it might be on a public website not blocked by an appropriate robots.txt

It sounds like it is a worthwhile step to make it Google and friends problem to not store that information. Similar to how they blur faces in Google Maps.

I don't think it's unreasonable, Google knows and we all know that private information ends up online without our permission, but Google is the only one in the conversation hoovering that data up and showing it to anyone who asks nicely.

I don't get to do that, laws apply to me that say I can't even collect that information without consent let alone display it.

It typically isn't private information. Things like names or addresses are public information.

Wouldn't it be more straightforward to make those sites that display personal information illegal themselves, rather than make it illegal for Google to index them?

Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on anything related to this.

Since the internet is global, it is very challenging to enforce something like that to a degree where it would be effective. Given a lot of directory sites are themselves low effort scrapers, and automated SEO/adsense plays, it would be a wack-a-mole.

That does put Google in a position of power though. Make that kind of site not allowed to participate in adsense and watch them vanish overnight.

I agree it would be hard to enforce. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make it illegal to host the content though. We could make it illegal to host the content and ask Google to delist it. Asking Google to delist it without making the content illegal doesn't make that much sense to me.

> Since the internet is global, it is very challenging to enforce something like that to a degree where it would be effective.

Is it? There is a solution: bad actors get kicked off the Internet. Russia doesn't do shit about cybercriminals? Block their networks until they comply. China gets caught again and again and again hacking into governments or companies? Just the same. India doesn't rein in their scam callcenters (just watch one of the recent Jim Browning videos)? Kick them off the net, and the same punishment for their VoIP providers that act as accomplices. Domestic providers ignoring countless abuse reports against people who had their routers compromised? Disconnect them until they've cleaned up their act and don't pose a threat any more.

The official blathering why this isn't done against other nations is "their population depends on access to the free flow of information" or "it would cost our companies too much money", and that's bullshit. Our enemies don't even need Trojan horses, we directly invite them into our homes. And domestic bad actors hide behind laws limiting their liability. Enough with that. Time to hold malicious, incompetent or greedy actors accountable instead of forcing people to drop unknown calls due to an onslaught of spam or companies to hide behind the protection rackets commonly known as "CDNs" and "botnet protection services".

Hmm. It is a lot to think about frankly, a very large topic. My gut reaction is no, being a global net is what makes it robust and enables so many positive outcomes. I would say more positive than negative. I also feel as though the expectation that the internet is global is what protects it from nation states themselves. It would start with an obvious win, like banning a country due to cyberattacks, but would it stop there? Would we eventually start disconnecting outselves into dozens of small nets, little bubbles of thought compliant citizens happy on our protected nets, unable to share information across borders except through sanctioned channels?

I am just thinking out loud, I don't have the answer and you raise a valid train of thought.

> Wouldn't it be more straightforward to make those sites that display personal information illegal themselves, rather than make it illegal for Google to index them?

Exactly! Same principle as why we should mandate burqas.

Just make it illegal to be identifiable in public, instead of illegal for surveillance industry to collect and track identities.

I have a hard time understanding your point.

Are you saying that being a free search engine for webpages makes you part of the surveillance industry, but People Finder et. al., that charge money for the express purpose of letting you snoop on other people aren't?

My point isn't that we should make it illegal for people to be identifiable in public. My point is that instead of making it illegal for Google to index People Finder, it would be more logical to make People Finder illegal.

You know that phone books existed before Google, right? Your name, phone number, and address have not been considered private for most of history.

In fact, City Directories were much more comprehensive, from the end of the 18th century. City Directories can contain people's exact home addresses, their occupations, and places of employment. The directories were a combined white pages-yellow pages even before the phone company got in on it.

Traditionally, in most small towns, privacy has meant something entirely different, because all the residents of a town knew everybody else's business, whether it was from open sharing, gossip, or low-tech spying. People in a small town do not have freedom of movement or freedom of anonymity. There is no crowd to blend into.

Yep, surely you also know the world has changed dramatically since then too, especially in regards to information security. International automated scraping and spam, identity theft and even stalking are now international activities. People weren't under such high pressure from information threats in the ye olden days.

Name and phone numbers are Personally Identifying Information in most countries with strong privacy laws, for me I cannot store that info privately without consent let alone make it public.

You know that in many territories, being in the phone book is/was opt in?

I'm not denying that this is theoretically possible, but I have never experienced nor heard of anyone for whom this was the case. It does not seem like it would be workable at all tbh.

Telecom companies in the UK (and possibly the rest of Europe) must opt you in.

Can you list three? I can’t think of one, everywhere I know of that’s opt out.

In Poland, it's opt-in for individuals since 2004. (It's opt-out for companies.)

Opt-out

Think peoplefinder type websites. It's valid to question why they don't exclude this category of site.

maybe don't index peoplefinder?

Still doesn't work (since 9 months ago [1]): "Something went wrong and your request wasn't submitted. Check your internet connection and try again."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33338188

I got this too until I disabled my adblocker, then it worked fine.

Silly me... I forgot this is Google we're talking about. Thanks.

> Last year, we launched the Results about you tool to make it easy for you to request the removal of search results that contain your personal phone number

Might be because I'm not in the US but I'm getting a 404 there.

> You can access this tool in the Google app by clicking on your Google account photo and selecting “Results about you”, or by visiting goo.gle/resultsaboutyou. This tool is available in the U.S. in English to start, and we're working to bring it to new languages and locations soon.

Have to wait again

There are several countries where Google is required to offer something along these lines by law rather than as a marketing stunt. Wikipedia has some info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten

I wonder if this will harm Google as a search engine even further. It's not as if they are removing the content, merely the index entry. Others will still return the result.

The wolf is in the henhouse giving advice to the hens.

We don't Sell your data, we give it away for free in the ad bidding process :D

> privacy tools

> blog.google

LOL

Read title: sounds interesting. See it's Google blog: lol.

funny, I cannot reach the site... "This site can’t be reached"

I am using quad9 DNS

Since when have comments become so obnoxious on HN?

A very large portion of the population willingly and happily uses Google products. These new tools make it easier to remove unwanted data about yourself from search. That's a good thing.

Please stop it with the "Google bad" circle jerk and realize that the majority of non-nerds has a very different perspective on this.

Circle jerk or not, Google is bad, and there's no reason why we shouldn't talk about that fact. Doesn't really matter if tons of people use Google products with whatever level of happiness they have.

Google is the perpetrator of serious privacy abuses, and we should rightly be skeptical any time they write about improving people's privacy online.

Reasonable discussion of this would be fine. 90% of comments being snarky and adding absolutely nothing to the topic is not.

Because the blog post itself is also snarky and adds absolutely nothing to the topic either. The biggest tracking company in the world is talking about privacy controls, how else we are supposed to take that other than sarcasm?

I see your point, it's the low value posts that are the problem, which is lazy non-non-nerds not actually helping to explain why bad.

Let us have our non-non-nerd whinge about companies that are, legitimately, bad in terms of individual privacy, especially when they're publishing a blog article about protecting privacy.

You're not wrong about the non-nerds, but that's the same about anyone who doesn't possess the knowledge to know better.

If we didn't call it out, it would become normalised even faster. I can't live with that.

This board is full of people who think they are subject matter experts.

Dunning and Kruger have some notes on the matter.

if you missed a payment or end up at the collection agency, your private info get leaked online immediately