How Google’s New Results About You Feature Can Protect Your Privacy Online

Google is offering a new way to hide your online personal information, and experts say you should take advantage of it. 

The search giant has rolled out an enhancement to the "Results about you" tool, which now notifies you whenever it identifies your personal contact information within Search results. This new capability lets you quickly remove the data. It's part of a number of new ways to keep control of the spread of your personal information as concerns grow about the misuse of private data. 

"When hackers gain access to personal information, they can sell this data and expose web users to identity theft," Amir Tarighat, a digital security expert and the CEO of the cybersecurity company Agency, told Lifewire in an email interview. "Hackers will often cross-reference personal information that's already out there to hack into personal accounts, which causes a chain reaction as this information can be used in the next data breach."

Removing Your Data From Search Results

Last year, Google introduced the Results About You feature, simplifying the process for users to request the deletion of search results containing their email, home address, or phone number. This functionality could be accessed directly from the Google app or any other means of accessing Search. Now, Google has enabled tracking your personal contact details within Search and issues alerts to users when such information is detected. 

The tool can be accessed in the Google app by clicking on your Google account photo and selecting 'Results about you' or visiting goo.gle/resultsaboutyou. 

Private information on the Internet can be a concern for users because it can be found and recorded by web crawlers and bots, automated software that searches the Internet continuously for the most recent publicly available data on the most relevant websites, Michael Nizich, the director of the Entrepreneurship and Technology Innovation Center and a professor of computer science at New York Institute of Technology, said in an email. 

"That data can then be used for all kinds of unsavory purposes, including phishing scams, identity theft, and even threatening phone calls and letters demanding some sort of payment by anyone on the web," he added. 

Nizich called the new Google privacy tool "a very attractive and useful solution." However, he said that the source of the personal data is of the most concern.  

"In other words, Google will not be able to erase your private data on other hosted websites if it exists there, but it may be able to stop displaying that data to other Google users based on your requests," he added. "This means that the data is still out there and will be displayed to any person, web crawler, or bot that comes upon it during its processing indefinitely, even if Google has decided not to display it to people based on your requests."

Protect Your Data Online

Once your personal data has been released, it is extremely difficult to remove the information from the individual websites that are hosting it, Nizich said. If you suspect your data has been stolen, he recommends freezing your credit through free services offered by companies like Transunion, Experian, and Equifax. 

The most effective way to minimize threats against personal accounts is to quickly identify when personal information or credentials are leaked on the deep or dark web, Tarighat said. To proactively protect themselves, web users should monitor for suspicious activity related to their accounts on websites like Have I Been Pwned and check which of their statements might be compromised and what information is out there through Dark Web Scan. 

"Timely identification gives high-value targets the ability to reset passwords before attackers can act upon the information," he added. 

One way to reduce risk is to minimize the use of your real name online, Jason Hong, a professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, said via email. For example, when sharing photos or posting on online forums, use a username unrelated to your real name. 

"Yet another strategy is to only share things online that would be widely considered safe," he added. "There's a famous saying about only sharing things online that you wouldn't mind seeing on the front page of a newspaper."