How To Get Around Google's 'Right To Be Forgotten' Deletions

How To Get Around Google's 'Right To Be Forgotten'

After a decision by a European court, Google has recently been forced to remove links to certain content on request. Known as the 'right to be forgotten', or more recently the 'right to annoy Robert Peston', the search engine opposed the change but its hands were tied by the law.

The internet, however, is the sort of place where that kind of thing tends to only work for so long.

In fact there are a number of ways to get around the blockages if you know how -- or rather, if you know for what to search.

First, the content block only works if you search for the exact name or search term for which Google has been asked to remove the link.

For instance, if you search "why has Google killed this example of my journalism", Google turns up numerous links to Robert Peston's deleted-on-Google blog (and stories about that blog, which is now enshrined Barbara Streisand style in internet history).

Similarly, the ban is only implemented on European versions of Google.

That means if you were to visit Google via a proxy from another country -- or even just deliberately access an international version of the search engine based outside the EU -- you would be able to see the full search results.

The reason is that the results are not really wiped from the web, or even from Google. Peston's blog, for instance, was not deleted from the BBC servers, and there is no way to delete links from social media or other ways of finding information.

What we've ended up with is a delete button for the internet which doesn't work, and in Peston's case has actually had the reverse effect. As Peston concludes in his blog "It is all a bit odd.".

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