Google Offers Data Removal Tool

It’s often (half)joked that big tech companies know more about us than we know about ourselves. And Google is arguable the largest data collector on the internet. But did you know that Google offers a way for individual users to request search results about themselves to be removed? The tool, branded “Results About You”, was launched in 2022 and is available to the 1.8 billion Google users. There are some important caveats about this free service, though. First, you must provide Google with information about you so they can monitor for it. I provided by name, email, and phone (which Google already has anyway) but skipped entering my social security number and driver’s license number. Secondly, all Google can do is remove search results about you; they cannot remove your info from the actual websites, nor can they remove results from other search engines. In my own testing of this service, it identified about half a dozen instances of my personal email and cell phone number for which I was able to request removal. So if you accept these limitations, it may be worth a few minutes of your time to see what it can do for you. Use this link to access the service directly.