I Want My RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN

 Introduction: A digital presence is now an integral part of our personal and professional lives and the information posted online is hard to remove. The internet practically never forgets. Google and other search engines are exceptionally competent at crawling the web to locate and store data.

The EU (European Union) has been assertive for a new law on data privacy of which “Right To Be Forgotten” is a key component. It claims that any inappropriate, in correct and outdated data should be taken out of the search results if the person involved requests it. Social media firms will now have to erase all the personal information on the individuals when requested under law that permits people the Right To Be Forgotten.

Definition:  Right To Be Forgotten can be defined as an amorphous privilege that would permit individuals to have more authority over their personal information, particularly that information which has been connected and collected through social forums.

ECJ (European Court of Justice) ruling imposed Right To Be Forgotten on search engines that are operating in Europe. The propagation of personal data accessible online expands further than their indexes. It is often subjugated for the advantages of other people and their intentions may be different form the wishes of data subjects. It will now be available for all data operators.

Need for The Right To Be Forgotten:  The Right To Be Forgotten provides the individuals with the authority to ask for the removal of their personal information in case there is no legitimate explanation for its ongoing processing by an organization.

The Right To Be Forgotten is however an elusive privilege. It is easier to understand as an idea rather than a policy to be implemented. It is nearly impractical to impose a law on dis-remembering, but the protocol has been raised to sustain personal confidentiality by deleting inappropriate, obsolete and incorrect information.

Implementation of The Right To Be Forgotten: The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) supports the Right To Be Forgotten by stating that organizations in the online environment that are responsible for making personal data public, should notify other organizations who use that personal data to remove links to, copies or replication of the personal data in consideration. While this might be a challenging task, especially when one processes personal data online for instance on social forums, networks or websites, one must strive to fulfill these requirements.

If the data controller has made some personal data public and is obliged to erase it, they must take reasonable steps to inform anyone else processing that data that the erasure has been requested. The Right To Be Forgotten promotes to allow individuals to have their data, photographs about themselves erased from certain internet records so that they cannot be accessed by various search engines.

The Right To Be Forgotten is proposed to deal with privacy risks online, by authorizing individuals to manage their own identity and information in the online environment. Thus if an individual does not want his or her personal information to be maintained or processed by a controller (eg. Facebook) and there is no compelling justification for maintain it, the information should be deleted from the engine.

                                                             

 Ms. Priyanka Gupta

Assistant Professor

Dept of Information Technology