Google was recently forced to de-index information about an Icelander following a ruling by the Icelandic Data Protection Authority.
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The decision concerned a man in a management position. When he first approached Google with his request, it was claimed that the nature of his position made information about him in the public interest.
Appealing the case to the Icelandic Data Protection Authority, the agency ruled that the so-called “right to be forgotten” was applicable to the case.
An excerpt from the decision reads as follows: “In certain cases, people may have the right to have information displayed about them in search engines, eg on Google, removed. Although the results are removed from search engines, the content will still be on the Internet, but in some cases it is also possible to get it removed. In this case, it was considered that the complainant’s privacy interests and his right to be forgotten outweighed the public’s interest in having access to the said information about him. It was therefore proposed to Google LLC to remove certain websites from the search results for the complainant’s name in the Google search engine.”
Given the private nature of the information, further information about the complainant was withheld from the report.
A redacted version of the decision can be read, in Icelandic, here.
