Google has taken significant steps to enhance user privacy and empower individuals to control their online presence through a series of updates to its Search service. The tech giant has refined its ‘results about you’ tool, initially introduced last year.
The ‘results about you’ tool enables users to request the removal of search results that contain their personal information, such as phone numbers, emails, or home addresses.
A noteworthy addition is the introduction of alerts that promptly notify users when their personal information appears in Search results, allowing them to take immediate action. Furthermore, a dedicated dashboard for this feature will soon be accessible.
Google’s commitment to safeguarding user information extends to monitoring the dark web for potential data breaches. This aligns with the company’s earlier introduction of the Google One feature that provides dark web monitoring capabilities.
Accessing the ‘Results About You’ Tool
To utilize this tool, users can navigate to the Google app and tap their profile picture, then select “results about you.” Alternatively, Google has created a dedicated webpage for users to access the tool.
Additional Privacy Measures
Expanding its efforts to protect user privacy, Google has broadened its policy on the removal of non-consensual explicit images from search results. If users have deleted such images from a website and they are reposted elsewhere without permission, Google can now remove them from Search. This applies to both consensual and non-consensual imagery, excluding content that users are actively commercializing.
Moreover, Google has taken steps to enhance parental controls and SafeSearch features. It is implementing default blurring for explicit imagery in search results. Users will have the option to deactivate SafeSearch blurring in settings, unless their settings are locked by a school network administrator or a guardian.
Making parental controls more accessible, Google is providing an information box when users search for terms like “Google parental controls” or “Google family link.”
These updates underscore Google’s commitment to creating a user-friendly and secure Search experience. The initial availability of these features is in the United States and English. However, Google plans to extend these updates to other languages and regions in the near future.
In parallel, Google continues to enrich its Search service by integrating generative AI-powered features. This initiative, called the Generative AI-powered Search Experience (SGE), aims to expedite users’ acquisition of new knowledge, offer tailored tips, and provide insights about products and various considerations.
