Have we forgotten the ‘Right to be Forgotten’?
Hola!
I hope you all are safe in this pandemic, and are able to adjust to this new normal that is just surfacing.
Today, I want to take a few minutes to talk about the ‘Right to be Forgotten’. As Wikipedia defines, “it reflects the claim of an individual to have certain data deleted so that third persons can no longer trace them.” Did you just catch yourself thinking that it doesn't matter much to me, because hey, who am I hiding from? Who’s gonna put efforts in tracing me, lol?
Well, here’s my personal experience, that dates back to…the day before yesterday. Yes, it is this recent! And this is what prompted me to write this article today, even though I was thinking of it for almost a year :/
I checked this email in the evening, and had I been in a hurry, I would have jumped straight to opening the attachment, since I’m anticipating some Google docs from unknown email addresses anyhow. There was no security threat notification from Google too, and it appeared like just another email. at first glance.
Mentioning it for the record, I don’t know anyone named “Peter Paul” or the other two people CC’ed in this thread. I reported it as ‘Phishing scam’ and thought of moving on to some other work. But this question that where did he get my email address from, kept me from switching tabs.
I googled another two email addresses CC’ed in this mail, and was shocked to see Google throw up a reference to a PDF containing a long list of emails in both the search results on CourseHero.com
This document contains thousands of email addresses and is uploaded by someone named Dinesh Reddy, again a name I’ve never heard of.
However, I can do nothing about it, except reporting the PDF at CourseHero. This is now CourseHero’s choice whether or not to remove that content, and I’m almost 99.99% sure that just one flag won’t catch their eye.
Fortunately, in my case, nobody was harmed and I came out safe from this malicious attempt. But many people can’t. Have you read about Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja González incident? It’s worth your 5 minutes, give it a read, if you haven’t yet.
Search Engines have become the controllers of our data now, which is, needless to say, dangerous. Okay, does “Right to Be Forgotten” conflict the “Right to Know”? Let me know your views.
The fine lines and rationales being used to negotiate these rights are dependent on the context, existing laws, and how the judiciary actually favor privacy v/s public interest. The ones most affected by this are the individuals with a substantial internet presence.
It all boils down to which concept to be used to declare the Internet: as a common concern, as a global public good, or as part of the common heritage of mankind.
With all my heart, I appreciate Mozilla’s efforts in bringing awareness to this topic of “The Internet as a Global Public Resource”. I’ve been there as a Mozilla Open Leader, and trust me, I personally have never seen an organization more sorted and excited to make the Internet open and accessible to all.
I hope their efforts come to fruition, and we all can enjoy a Healthy Internet. Also, this is my request to all the ones who have been turning a deaf ear to their data privacy, this is the time, be aware that no anti-virus software can save you, once these malicious attackers have your personal data. Stay informed, Stay safe!
Update: I used this form on Google’s help page and got my email address removed from appearing in search results :)
