Look out for scary new Google alert – it’s got a very worrying meaning
GOOGLE will alert people whenever their contact information is exposed on the internet.
The tech giant can detect things like phone number, email address and even home address that appear on its search engine.
It’ll send out a warning popup to users so they can review it and request a removal.
The move is part of a bigger push revealed by the firm to give billions more control.
Google‘s brand new ‘results about you’ tool lets anyone send off a quick takedown request for anything about them they don’t want online.
While the information won’t appear on Google searches, it will still appear on the websites that posted it in the first place of course, as Google has no control over what people put on their websites.
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But at least visibility of those details will be significantly lessened with it no longer showing up on Google Search.
However, Google says people will have to opt-in to receive the notifications.
So they won’t come up automatically unless you switch it on.
Plus, the feature isn’t launching until next year.
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And when it does land, it’ll only be available in the US at first, so the UK and other places might have a bit of a wait on their hands.
As Google notes, people can still submit removal requests the long way if they spot any themselves.
“The tool makes it easier to make removal requests of personal information from Google Search, but removal requests can also be done globally by anyone using our form-based system,” the firm said.
How to remove personal information from Google search
If you see any of your personal contact information on Google, you can already submit a manual removal request.
First up, visit Google’s Support page.
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Click the start removal request button.
Fill in the boxes, giving Google as much detail as possible.
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