Google will allow removing photos of minors 1:03
(CNN Spanish) -
Google presented a tool for minors or their parents to delete photos of them in the search results of browsers.
The company said Wednesday that it is rolling out a tool that allows parents and children under the age of 18 to request that photos be removed from search results or no longer appear as thumbnails in a search query.
While Google previously offered ways for people to request the removal of personal information and photos that fit into categories like "explicit non-consensual" or "financial, medical and national identification," it is now expanding it to images of minors under 18 years of age.
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"We know that children and teens have some unique challenges to face online, especially when a photo of them is unexpectedly available on the Internet," the company said in the blog post.
"We believe this change will help young people have more control over their fingerprint and where their images can be found on Search."
Even if the images do not appear in search results, they will not be removed from the website where they appear, Google warned.
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"Although we can prevent an image from appearing in our search results, we cannot remove it from the websites that host it. For this reason, we recommend that you contact the site's webmaster and ask them to remove the content." Google said on its website.
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This is how the tool to delete photos of minors works
Who can apply?
To start the withdrawal process, the request must be made by the minor himself, a legal guardian or an authorized representative.
"Authorized representatives will need to explain how they have the power to act on your behalf," Google says.
What is the process?
1. You need to start the petition in a Google online form.
2. Identify the URL of the Image: in the form you must put the URL that hosts the image, not the URL of the website where it appears.
To identify the internet address that hosts the image, it must begin with
https://images.app.goo.gl/
or
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl,
according to Google.
On this page you can learn how to get the URL of the image either from a computer, an Android device or iPhone or iPad.
3. An "identifiable person who is currently under 18 years of age" must visibly appear in the image.
Google says that they also remove the images from its search engine when "the tragic situation" occurs that a minor died before reaching the age of 18.
What happens after submitting the form?
Once you fill out the form, Google will send you an automatic confirmation to your email confirming that they received the request.
If it meets the requirements mentioned above, Google will collect more information if it needs to, and "in some cases," it says, they might ask you for more information in reference to the photo.
"If the request does not include the information necessary for us to evaluate it (for example, if the URLs are missing), we will share specific instructions with you and ask you to resubmit the request," Google says on its blog.
After studying each case, Google will make a decision, and if it determines that it is an image that you can remove, according to its policy, the photo in question will disappear from the search results, not from the website that hosts it.
If the request does not meet the requirements and is rejected, Google will inform you of the reasons.
"If your application is rejected and you have other materials to support your case, you can resubmit it," the company said on its blog.
- With information from Murphy Kelly of CNN Business.
