How to Remove your Personal Info from Google Search Results

Google search results

 Do you really need privacy?

Then you need to know how to block and remove your Personal Info like phone number, home or office address, email address, and other important data about yourself from Google's search results.   

Here, I present you some essential tips you need to know and follow :   

Search engines are not new to personal identifiable information. Search engines have a way of collecting users information on the internet over the years. However, the Alphabet the parent company of Google and Google its subsidiary have come to realise that internet users don't want their information to be found in a search. New laws were enacted which have helped nudge search engine companies in that direction. At times, this has helped internet users to call for privacy tools that are better. This has made Google to appear more privacy oriented than their counterpart Facebook. They relent and found it easier than to compete with Facebook.

Just of recent, Google made some additions to its privacy repertoire by asking you to assent to the delete of your phone number, email and physical addresses from potential search results from search engines. This is a big innovation for the search engine as you can request this without having to prove or submit an application that the data floating on the search engine results is a big problem (with some exceptions).

The above mentioned Personal Identifiable Information PII has been included to the already-existing ability to limit exposure on Google results of the following:

• National ID numbers
• ​Bank accounts
• ​Credit card numbers
• ​Personal signatures
• ​Login info and credentials
• ​Medical records
• "Irrelevant pornography" (that is, explicit material somehow tied to your name)
• ​Manipulated porn you may appear in against your will.

If you're afraid of getting your informations to be publicly identified or published, Google may even remove your professional contact info.

That’s all classic information! but how exactly do you get Google to take down the infringing PII?

Ultimately, This can be done within Google app. For instance, Picture doing a search on your phone number, then it appears in results, you would be able to click the three-dot menu next to the result to ask that it be deleted. This will happen within the next few months, Google would say. Before then, you've got to do some little work.

REQUEST TO REMOVE YOUR PERSONAL INFO

The Google Search Help page is the first stop you need to consult. It shows the direct link to this form: Request to remove your personal information on Google, and a rundown of options.

Two options would appear, either to remove information that appears in search results or to prevent or block information from showing up in searches altogether. If you what you want is to prevent/block information from showing up in searches, and you are the owner of website with the information you don't want showing, Google would help you with details of how to block a URL or specific site pages from Google search results. This involves robots.txt files, meta tags, and password-protecting page files.

For you to remove an information you need to know if it is appearing only in Google search results or in other search engines results and on a separate website. If it appears on a separate website, Google would ask if you have contacted the site's owner and suggest ways to contact the site's owner as it may not have control over it.

After going through the steps above you are still not able to contact the site's owner or you don't want to. A series of questions would be asked from you by Google like when kind of information would you like to remove, possibly narrow it to one specific thing. It will also ask whether the content was shared with the purpose of harming i.e.the Personal Identifiable Information was shared with the intent to dox you.

However, there might be need to provide a lot of data, probably, Google will follow up with you before deleting the Personal Identifiable Information found in search results.

HOW TO REMOVE OUTDATED CONTENTS

Whenever your Personal Identifiable Information appears on a live page you control in search results, but you have already updated the information to remove the former information, automatically it should go away—but the page might be cached. Then you can now request to remove the outdated web pages. You'll need specific URLs for pages; you can submit up to 1,000 URLs on the form.

Besides, you can also request the removal of images that are outdated found at images.google.com—by copying the needed URLs for each image as well

After that, you will receive an email notification that your request is successful. (If you are unable to receive it, do it again). Note that the request will be reviewed by Google to gather more information if there's need to, and finally, you'll get a notification of any action.

It is worthy of note to be aware that your request doesn't guarantee that it will be granted. It's carefully stated in Google Announcement page that when they receive removal request "all content will be evaluated on the web page to ensure that they are not blocking the availability of other important information that be useful especially for news articles. And again, information might be remote from the search results but it would still appears on the web page (website)"

Removal of Illegal Content

It may not be your personal info only that you would like to remove, it may be an illegal content you saw in search results when surfing the internet, such as the infringement of intellectual property or inciting and criminalized content. If that be the case, visit Google's Report Content for Legal reasons and create a request. There is a whole video about it by Google.

For Similar Search Engines

You need to know the Personal Identifiable Information removal policies at other search engines:

DuckDuckGo

For DuckDuckGo, which boasts itself on having the best privacy, your only method is to mail them using their email removalrequest@duckduckgo.com and look forward that the Personal Identifiable Information removal request falls under their privacy laws. Or else, the company won't reply your request.

Microsoft Bing

For Bing (Microsoft), there's limit to let you submit a request to remove a Page, but only for pages that are not active online. For webmasters only. Nevertheless, Bing expects you to get in touch with the website that first published your Personal Identifiable Information, do all the tedious tasks involved to clear it, and then submit a request on the Page Removal Request.

You're Never Invisible

You can not expect to be invisible or unnoticeable when you are inclined to the internet, so deleting your digital information is not as easy as going off the internet (offline). Your information got indexed, it's not search engines that put it there. They have ability to capture your from page source even if you delete it.

Though, the use of Abine's DeleteMe or IDX Privacy's Forget Me feature will do what they can to prevent your information from being used by data brokers (for a subscription fee). The only sure way to get rid of your personal info from search results is to delete all information of yourself and get offline finally because you're never going to be free unless you do this.

By deleting all your old email accounts, with abrupt end to mobile apps and location services, social media, online shopping, and never sign into anything  

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