Privacy Regulators Urge 'Right To Be Forgotten' Online

In the first sign of where Europe may be headed with its privacy regulations, the European Union announced this week that social networking sites and search engines could face court action if they fail to obey new EU data privacy rules.

Under proposals to be fleshed out in the coming months and that will update 16-year-old data-protection laws, the European Commission wants to force companies holding data to allow users to withdraw it from websites, calling it the "right to be forgotten."

Read the whole story: Reuters

Comments

[CaptainFrogbert]

08:35 AM on 03/21/2011

There should not only be a right to be forgotten, but there needs to be a right to refuse flash cookies and other forms of internet tracking and data gathering. You all know about cookies and (if you're smart) you delete them regularly, But do you know that Flash, that ubiquitous web app that we are told we cannot do without (no matter how slow, buggy or power hoggy it is) also places cookies on your computer? And that these cookies are MUCH harder to find and delete? And that they are capable of regenerating the cookies you THOUGHT you deleted?

Congress needs to act to curtail information gathering without consent.

Oh wait, this congress, and this "liberal" president, never does anything with first asking :May I?" from the very corporations that need to be regulated. Oh well. Get used to being watched by Big Brother all the time on the web. You are now the property of the corporate state.

[kinogod]

10:37 PM on 03/20/2011

Love this idea but everything is encrypted on multiple servers - this is the dawn of never being private or forgotten.

[SaneThoughts]

08:37 PM on 03/20/2011

Never happen. How will corporations track you and profile you and traffic in you personal information for profit? Just wait till you need a license to use the Internet. Privacy is an illusion. Just look back at Watergate when Republicans stole Democrats database information. It happened years later again and there was a hearing chaired by Republicans during the lost Bush decade. That time nobody cared. Privacy is only for private sector corporations and government under Republican control.

[studioh!]

12:35 PM on 03/19/2011

all right, forget it.

[man in the middle]

12:13 PM on 03/18/2011

Forget it people, privacy on the internet is not possible. You can't legislate trust. Your best defense is to exchange information only with sites you trust. There is no other way.

[hypnotoad72]

05:51 PM on 03/18/2011

Or if everybody disown the technology.  Good luck to that.