The full scale of EU ‘right to be forgotten’ rules revealed: Google says it has been forced to delete 260,000 links by legislation criticised for protecting terrorists and criminals

‘Google has revealed the full extent of its ‘right to be forgotten’ operation, disclosing that it has removed over 260,000 links from search results.

The European Court of Justice ruled in May that Google must remove links to websites that include content that is ‘inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant’. However, the ruling has been criticised by Culture Secretary Sajid Javid, who said that criminals were using it to hide their murky pasts.

The search giant admitted this week that so far there had been 216,810 requests for web links to be removed. This resulted in 783,510 links being reviewed and 262,280 hidden from internet users.’

Read more: The full scale of EU ‘right to be forgotten’ rules revealed: Google says it has been forced to delete 260,000 links by legislation criticised for protecting terrorists and criminals