Image: Google
Google is launching a new feature to help you find and delete your contact information from its Search results. The company will now alert you when it detects your address, phone number, or email on the web. It will then let you review and request to remove that information from Search.
You can access this feature from Google’s “results about you” dashboard on mobile and web, which it introduced last September. With the update, you can enter your personal information, and the dashboard will automatically show you websites with matches. It allows you to check each webpage it appears on and then ask to remove it. This move is a significant improvement, as Google used to require you to look for your personal information yourself and then manually ask for its removal.
If you want to prevent your information from showing up on Google in the future, you can also turn on push notifications that would warn you of any new results that appear—something it said it would do last year. You can also track your requests from Google’s hub, which displays your pending, approved, denied, and undone requests.
However, keep in mind that removing your information from Google doesn’t mean it’s completely gone from the web. People can still find your info if they visit the webpage it’s on. Google also has restrictions on the types of search results it can and can’t remove and won’t act on results from governments or educational institutions.
Still, this update makes finding and deleting your personal information from Google much faster—which is especially useful if you’re a target of doxxing. Right now, this feature is only available in the US in English to start, and Google says it’s working to bring it to other countries and languages “soon.”