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What might be revealed on the internet about anyone is staggering — and downright scary at times.
Enter your name in Google to see what’s known about you. Your phone numbers may show up among the search results, along with your email and street addresses, and possibly other information you use to log in to websites.
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“The availability of personal contact information online can be jarring. And it can be used in harmful ways, including for unwanted direct contact or even physical harm,” Michelle Chang, Google’s global policy lead for search, blogged in April 2022.
That’s when Google, by far the biggest search engine in the world, announced that you can ask to have your phone numbers and addresses removed from search results. This service was in addition to policies already in place that enabled you to request the removal of bank accounts, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and even images of your signature — the kind of stuff that could help a crook or creep steal your identity, commit financial fraud or expose your private data online through what’s known as doxxing.
But Google didn’t make it simple to request removal of that information, which involved navigating a Google support page and telling the company why it should grant your request. Among the steps you needed to take: directing Google to the information, search results or web page you wanted removed and letting the company know whether you contacted the website owner.
A promise of streamlining search removal
Google subsequently rolled out a “Results about you” tool to streamline the request process, which you can access either in the Google app for Android or Apple products or on a desktop or mobile browser.
Now Google is bolstering the tool with a soon-to-arrive dashboard that will give users even more control inside Results about you.
“You’ll be able to learn more about any [search] results our systems find, directly request their removal via the dashboard itself, and track the status of your requests,” Google product manager Angel Rodriguez says. “We’ll also notify you when any new results containing your personal contact information pop up in search, giving you added peace of mind.”
The tool, still in beta, will initially be available only in English in the United States, though Google plans to bring it to other countries and languages soon.
How to get started
Once it launches, you can access the tool in the Google app on your phone by clicking on your account picture and tapping Results about you. From a web browser, enter myactivity.google.com/results-about-you. You’ll have to be logged into your Google account.
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