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Google: One in ten 'Right to be forgotten' requests originate from the UK

Image via Huffington Post UK

Google has released figures in which show that one in ten requests to be removed from search results under the European "right to be forgotten" laws have originated from the UK.

Google claims they have evaluated 498,737 links for removal since May of this year, including 63,616 pages originating from requests by UK citizens.

In total, 18,403 requests were submitted which is the third highest in the EU; Google honoured just 35% of those requests, resulting in the removal of 18,459 links.

As part of the transparency report, Google also gave examples of some of the requests it honoured and turned down, among them -- a UK public official who wanted a link to a student organisation's petition demanding his removal taken down.

Google also rejected a request of a former clergyman from the UK who asked for two links to articles about an investigation into sexual abuse accusations about him to be removed.

It said a UK "media professional" had requested the removal of four links to articles reporting on "embarrassing content he posted to the internet", a request which was also turned down.

A doctor from the UK also requested 50 links be removed from results to a newspaper article about a botched procedure, Google said that it only removed links that contained personal information about the doctor, but "the rest of the links to reports on the incident remain in search results".

Facebook was the most affected destination site, with 3,353 links removed across Europe and YouTube -- a subsidiary of Google, also had 2,392 links removed.

Source: Google via BBC

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