Information you or others posted on the Internet may haunt you for years, hinder your business, personal life and make difficult for you to finds a new job.
Previously hard to get information is now easily available simply using the all-mighty Google that makes skeletons in the wardrobe an easy to find pray. Data protection agencies in many countries were assaulted by angry citizens who appealed in vain or even sued Google to get the links to their unwanted public profiles removed and get back their anonymity.
The latest scandal erupted in Spain, where over 100 persons asked the search engine multinational to remove links to information about them and started legal procedures to get this right. Spanish authorities support their citizens in the on going cases against Google to get links taken down, but others worry that a dangerous precedent that leads to restrictions to public information could be created.
Google is known to have received requests to remove links to unwanted information from its search index or at least push them as far as possible from the first search page, but the company policy is to turn down all these requests in order to preserve the accuracy of its index.
The European Commission is expected to give people the right to delete personal information they posted online, but legal battles may last years, so beware what you place on the Internet about you and your business.
The best approach is to be very careful what you post about you from the very beginning. Also, check permanently what others may have posted about you (mainly friends posting group photos where you are also present). Do all that is possible to avoid embarrassing photos being taken with you - you never know when they end on the Internet.
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