Most Americans support right to have some personal info removed from online searches

Americans prefer to keep certain information about themselves outside the purview of online searches. Given the option, 74% of US adults say it is more important to be able to “keep things about themselves from being searchable online,” while 23% say it is more important to be able to “discover potentially useful information about others.”

The ability to keep personal information from being searchable online is at the crux of the debate around the “right to be forgotten” – a term that first gained attention in 2014 when the European Court of Justice ruled against the search engine giant Google in a high-profile privacy case. The court declared that under certain circumstances, European Union residents could have personal information removed or deleted from search results and public records databases. To date, Google reports that it has received more than 880,000 individual delisting requests from EU residents.