More than 280,000 people ask Google for the right to be forgotten

Baku. 13 July. REPORT.AZ/ The massive scale of the controversial ‘right to be forgotten’ can be laid bare, after Google admitted that it has already been asked to take down more than a million links.

Report informs citing foreign media, requests have flooded in across Europe since the law came into effect last spring – some of them from killers, rapists and terrorists who want to use the European law to hide their criminal pasts.

The European Court of Justice ruled in May 2014 that Google must remove links to websites that include content that is 'inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant'.

Since then, the web search giant has received more than 281,000 requests from people who wanted information about themselves to be suppressed. The requests asked for 1.1million web links to be removed – 602,000 of which have been deleted.

And there is a notable split by nationality. The French, it seems, are the most eager to hide details about their pasts, requesting the removal of more than 197,000 links over the last 13 months – equivalent to a fifth of all the requests across Europe.

The British are less likely to use the controversial ‘right to be forgotten’ online. Google has received 35,390 requests for 138,576 links to be erased since the law came into effect. However, Britons’ requests are more likely to be granted.

Google agreed to remove 63 per cent of the links flagged for removal on its UK website, compared with just 52 per cent of those on its French operation.