Right to be forgotten · UK and EU delisting
The right to be forgotten, and where its limits actually fall
UK and EU residents can ask Google to stop returning a result about them. The right is real, it is qualified, and the balancing test decides almost every case.
What the right actually is
A right to object, not a right to erase.
Article 17 of the UK GDPR gives you the right to ask a controller to erase personal data about you, and the Court of Justice decided in Google Spain that a search engine is a controller when it indexes your name. That is the whole legal basis, and it is narrower than the phrase suggests.
Two things follow. The right runs against Google, not against the publisher: a successful request stops the page being returned for your name, while the page itself stays up. And it is qualified rather than absolute — every request is a balance between your privacy and the public's interest in still being able to find the page.
The balancing test
What decides it.
The ICO guidance and the judgment in NT1 & NT2 v Google LLC [2018] EWHC 799 (QB) set out the factors that matter. Mr Justice Warby delisted for one claimant and refused the other on essentially these grounds, which is why that case is the practical reference rather than a theoretical one.
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How long ago it was
The single strongest factor. Material that was plainly newsworthy when published can lose that character entirely with time, and the older it is the less weight the public interest carries.
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Whether you hold public office
A politician, a regulated professional or a company director accepts a degree of scrutiny that a private individual does not. This is what separated the two claimants in NT1 & NT2.
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Whether it is still accurate
An article reporting a charge, where the charge was later dropped, is no longer accurate about you even though it was accurate when written. Inaccuracy is close to decisive.
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Whether it is a special category
Health, sexuality, religion, political opinion, trade-union membership and criminal offence data attract stronger protection, and a request touching them starts from a better position.
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Whether the conviction is spent
Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 a spent conviction is treated as not having happened for most purposes, and that rehabilitation is undermined if it is the first result for your name.
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How you have behaved since
Continued conduct of the same kind, or a public statement about the matter, weighs against a request. NT1 failed partly on this. Candour matters here, and we would rather know at the assessment.
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Whether it relates to your working life
Material about how you conduct business, particularly where consumers or investors deal with you, retains more public interest than material about your private life.
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Whether a child is involved
Material concerning someone who was a child at the time is delisted far more readily, and Google will usually act on request.
How we make the request
Prepared as an argument, not a form.
Google's own form invites a sentence. A request that succeeds sets out the role you hold, the age and accuracy of the material, what has changed since publication, and the specific search terms it should no longer be returned for — because delisting is granted per term, not in general.
A refusal is not the end. It can be escalated to the ICO, and in parallel we pursue the publisher route, because the two fail for different reasons. The engagement letter names both if both apply.
If you are in the United States
There is no equivalent right, and the routes are different.
The First Amendment means no general right to be forgotten exists in US law, and no delisting request will succeed on that basis. What does work is narrower and more practical: platform policy, the outdated-content tool where the source page has changed, defamation where a statement is false and provable, privacy law where the material is intimate or was obtained unlawfully, and negotiation with the publisher.
California, Colorado and a growing number of other states now give residents deletion rights against data brokers, which is why people-search listings are removable in the US even though news coverage generally is not.
Questions
About delisting.
Do you handle UK right-to-be-forgotten requests?
Yes. For UK and EU residents we use the UK GDPR and GDPR delisting provisions alongside publisher and platform routes. For US clients we rely on platform policy, defamation and privacy law, and publisher negotiation.
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