# Google told to "forget" old Internet content (lest someone be embarrassed)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-told-to-forget-old-internet-content-lest-someone-be-embarrassed/688334>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [May 13, 2014, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-told-to-forget-old-internet-content-lest-someone-be-embarrassed/688334 "2014-05-13T10:42:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 7

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**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-told-to-forget-old-internet-content-lest-someone-be-embarrassed/688334/121 "2014-05-19T04:11:13Z")

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> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#):
>
> The question was whether “acting within the law” allows a corporation to retain this data in full on their servers as long as they only use it as reasonably justified by the nature of the business (i.e. they can crunch numbers and look for general patterns of querying behavior), but they can’t disclose sensitive personal information.

If the data is linked to an individual person, then it is personal data and the company has limited rights to hold that information in a storage and retrieval system. If it is fully anonymised it is not personal data. It is not about disclosure but about the mere possession of personal data.

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