Pandemic Fuels European Right To Be Forgotten Requests

Google and Bing received more than a million ‘right to be forgotten’ requests between 2015 and 2021, with cases rising dramatically during the pandemic.

Research from Surfshark shows that half of these requests came from users in western Europe, with French requests accounting for nearly a quarter of the total, while Estonia had the most requests per head of population. Eastern European countries exercised their right to erasure the least.

German users submitted 176,100 requests, with 125,300 from the UK, around 17 per cent and 12 per cent of the total, respectively. Between them, these three countries comprised around half of all right to be forgotten requests submitted between 2015 and 2020, with all other countries accounting for less than ten per cent of the total each.

After initial enthusiasm when the policy was introduced, requests tailed off between 2015 and 2020. Then, though, the number rose by nearly 30 per cent in 2020, reaching 161,300. Cyprus and Portugal, for example, submitted almost three times as many requests in 2020 than in the previous year.

And in the following year, there was a further 15 per cent rise across the board, with an all-time high of 185,700 requests across the region.

“One of the reasons for the rise in the “right to be forgotten” requests in 2020 could be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic. As many daily activities became virtual, it encouraged people to be more conscious of their digital hygiene and review their privacy online,” says Gabriele Kaveckyte, privacy counsel at Surfshark.

“At the same time, GDPR enforcement accelerated and continues to enforce online privacy as a fundamental human right to this day.”

The reasons for requests vary. While around half, says Surfshark, are hard to categorize, nearly 17 per cent fell under the heading of professional information, meaning pages that contained a requester’s work address, contact information, or general information about their business activities.

Around six per cent were challenged because they contained the requester’s personal information, such as their home address, residence, or other contact information, as well as images and videos of the individual.

And around one in ten web pages referred to the requester in terms of crime, including crimes related to their professional field.

Right to be forgotten laws are gradually catching on around the world, with India, South Korea, and some South American countries following the EU in introducing laws that recognize the right to erasure in various forms.

However, the legislation isn’t welcomed by all. In Europe, the insurance industry has been lobbying against blanket right to be forgotten provisions, claiming it could undermine insurance offerings by making the true risk of underwriting unknown.

And in some individual cases, requests can cause controversy. Late last month, for example, Google admitted it wrongly approved a right to be forgotten request relating to press coverage of Mark McCormick, who admitted to running six brothels in Dublin and was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment in 2010.

“Implementing the right to erasure within the EU, the UK, Switzerland, and associated territories is a giant leap forward in the fight to preserve and sustain global data privacy,” says Surfshark.

“However, many critics still argue that the right to be forgotten could harm freedom of expression by removing online content worldwide.”