New European Laws regarding reputation management

This is an issue about freedom of speech vs privacy! Learn about the New European Laws regarding reputation management. Have you ever scoured through your Facebook profile, trying to desperately delete any photographs that could look bad if a recruitment officer found them? You wouldn’t be the only one. Many businesses admit that they often do a quick Google search on any person that applies for a job with them, and although technically finding something incriminating about an employee is not a reason to fire them, it is certainly a good enough reason not to employ someone in the first place. However, a new piece of legislation created by the European Union called the information privacy law may change the playing field.  These laws are based on ‘Fair information purposes’.

The new European law is being known as ‘the right to forget’, and basically means that individuals can now directly apply to the search engine Google Europe to have web pages that concern them permanently deleted from their searches. Of course, that does not mean that those web pages have been removed forever from the internet – it just means that people will no longer be able to discover the page through a Google search. The European Union Laws regarding reputation management are confusing and has little or no importance for Americans or searches on google.com

New European Laws regarding reputation management

So what is the effect of the New European Laws regarding reputation management for us Americans?

Well, not very much at all actually. The law only applies to those that are European Union citizens, which means that even if you live within the European Union, you are probably not covered by this law. And you can think again if you have a company that operates within the European Union that has a web page about them you’d quite like to disappear. The law does not apply to companies at all, only individuals.

At the end of the day, this law does not really affect those that live in America, but it certainly highlights the problem of what can happen if someone Googles your name – and they find something distasteful. Being aware of what you put on the internet is up to you, and is your responsibility.