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Years ago, when I was young and fool, I sent personal information on a mailing list. Now, if someone type my first name and last name, this content shows up. I do not want this content to show up.
What could be done to address this annoying situation?
To be honest, I thought my mail would directly go into some developers' mailbox. It appears I was wrong.
I am from Europe, if that matters.
In some countries (including all countries within the European Union) there is - it's called the right to be forgotten.
You'll have to fill out a form per search engine, the one for Google can be found here.
You can ask the mailing list administrator to remove your personal information from the public list archive. This works anywhere in the world, and unlike the so-called "right" to be forgotten, it actually removes the information from the network.
You can usually reach such an administrator by contacting <listname>-owner@<domain>, but check the website for the mailing list to confirm contact information for its administrator.
Google has to follow the European Union ruling on the "right to be forgotten". Since links should be avoided here, the current steps that need to be taken are: Google > Remove information from Google > Take action > I don't control the web page. I hope this brings you in the right direction.
There is much you can do. CEE laws include the "right to be forgotten". That means, you have to personaly find each and every site and search engine that could have a track of the information you want to remove, an ask the site manager to remove it.
No problem for major search engine like google, at least at first sight. You ask them to de-reference the original link and they to it. They are glad of it because it says: if it exists on Internet it is referenced by Google, and if it is no longer in Google it has vanished. The reality is much worse. If another site has a link to the original page, or has partial copies - allowed in copyright laws of many countries, that indirect link will remain. Neither Google nor anyone else is asked to carefully clean the information. Only you are responsable to find every link or site.
Following is just a personal opinion. Google and other major search engine are particularly glad of that, because it re-inforce their position without forcing them to be responsable of anything else than their own database.
So as long as indirect links are not concerned by the right to be forgotten, the only thing than a sane human being should do is to never post an information that could later be harmful, because once published, you have no control on it. Even if you post it on a said private zone - not speaking of corporate private networks- you should think twice of that sentence shared by military intelligence services and anarchists: a secret shared by more than two persons is no longer a secret.
