Google is launching a new tool allowing Internet users to be notified when their contact details (telephone number or address) appear in one or more search results in order to facilitate the request for removal of the result in question. First deployed in the United States, the tool will later arrive in other regions of the world.
Google is one of the most famous tech companies in the world and billions of us use its services and products. It is precisely for this reason that the giant is often singled out for the way it manages all the personal data it has in its hands. The firm therefore strives to regularly show its credentials and to put forward some confidentiality measures.
This is precisely the theme of the latest Google announcements: to ensure better protection (in several senses of the term) of users of its search engine.
Avoid disclosing your phone number or address
The main novelty unveiled aims to better protect the personal details of Internet users such as the telephone number or the postal address. For a year, the shutter My activity Google account offers, in the United States, a “Results about you” option making it easy to request the deletion of a search result containing this type of sensitive information.
It is this option that is now enriched with a new dashboard “which will tell you if web results containing your details appear in Search“. This new interface not only aims to make it even easier to request the deletion of results compromising your personal data, but it is also designed to notify the user when new web results containing his phone number or address appear on the web.
In other words, Google does not wait for a person to come across a compromising result more or less by chance and report it. The company wants to take the lead and notify the user more effectively.
In the next few days, this tool will be deployed in English and only in the United States. Only later,Soonaccording to Google, that it will be available in other languages and in other regions of the world.
Protect against sensitive images
Also note that for some time, Google has been blurring by default, in its search results, images and visual content that may offend the sensibilities (content for adults, violent, etc.). This function is being deployed for everyone everywhere in the world and everyone will now be able, “adjust [ses] settings and turn them off at any time, unless a tutor or school network administrator has locked the setting“.
Access to parental control is also simplified, just type a query such as “google parental control” in the search bar to see a box of relevant information.
Finally, Google claims to have updated its policy on “explicit personal images“. So, “If you created and uploaded explicit content to a website and then deleted it, you can request its removal from Search if it is published elsewhere without permission. This policy does not apply to content that you are marketing“.
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