According to a recent study published by Surfshark, provider of VPN solutions, the French are the champions of the right to be forgotten. Indeed, French users submitted more than 43,000 requests in 2022, or more than a quarter of requests worldwide.
Since 2014, citizens of the European Union have been able to benefit from the right to be forgotten. To summarize, web users have the right to demand from search engines like Google to remove certain search results for queries that bear their name. This right was strengthened in 2018 with the adoption of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Indeed, the text includes the right to erasurea similar measure.
155,000 requests for the right to be forgotten in 2022
Surfshark, a provider of VPN solutions, has been conducting studies on the right to be forgotten for several years. In 2021, for example, the company examined more than 1.2 million right to be forgotten requests submitted to Google and Microsoft between 2015 and 2021. This report made it possible to discover certain key data, such as the volume of requests, the frequency with which web giants comply, etc.
However, Surfshark has just published the statistics recorded in 2022. First of all, more than 155,000 requests for the right to be forgotten were submitted in 2022 in the 32 countries which include this right in their legislation (or similar measure). Google also received the majority of requests: 147,000 in total, or 96% of requests. Surfshark notes a drop in the number of requests of 16% compared to 2021, a first historic drop since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
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France, number 1 in the right to erasure
We then learn that France remains the undisputed champion of the right to be forgotten. For good reason, France obtains the prize for the greatest number of requests submitted in 2022, with a total of 43,000 requests. Casually, this represents more than a quarter of requests worldwide or 7 requests per 10,000 people. But here again, requests have decreased significantly in our country, by 12% compared to 2021.
Germany and the United Kingdom then rank 2nd and 3rd in the ranking, with respectively 24,000 and 16,000 requests for the right to erasure. According to Surfshark, some countries have received far fewer requests despite their presence in the EU (and therefore subject to the GDPR), which therefore demonstrates a potential lack of information and awareness on this question, which is nevertheless crucial for the protection of privacy. Thus in 2022, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Czechia and Slovakia submitted less than one request for the right to be forgotten per 10,000 people.
Regarding the compliance rate of search engines, it is rather astonishing. Because, Microsoft and Google removed approximately 56 and 50% of requested URLs, respectively. As Google points out on its official website, search engines “must determine whether the information in question is inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive and whether it is in the public interest that it remains available in search results”. In fact, while Google removed URLs linked to sensitive or personal information overall (97% and 93%), information subject to criminal investigations had a removal rate of 61%.
Source: Surfshark