Google has updated its “Results about you” tool to help people find and remove personal information such as home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses from Google Search results.
The feature allows users to monitor whether their details appear in search results and request that links containing that information be removed from Google’s index. The move comes as the trade in personal data continues to grow, with Sophos X-Ops reporting a 1,253 per cent rise in dark web sales of personal data over the past five years.
Security experts say the tool can help limit the visibility of personal data, although it does not remove the information from the original website where it was published.
For businesses and organisations, regularly checking what information appears online and removing unnecessary personal data from public websites can help reduce the risk of identity theft, fraud and targeted harassment.
