The Right to be Forgotten: Protecting Reputation in the Digital Age

What is the right to be forgotten?

The right to be forgotten, also known as the right to the expiration of negative data, is a legal guarantee that empowers holders of personal data to remove, block or delete information that, over time, becomes irrelevant or harms their fundamental rights.

This concept has historical roots in the French“droit à l’oubli“, originally intended to protect people who, after serving their sentences, wished to avoid the public perpetuation of their criminal past. In the current digital context, the right to be forgotten has become a fundamental tool to safeguard the dignity, privacy and honor of individuals in the face of the permanent impact of the Internet.

What does this right entail?

The right to be forgotten allows harmful, socially objectionable or irrelevant data to disappear from search engines. These may be public and truthful, but over time may disproportionately affect the holder's personal or professional life. Its main objective is to protect the privacy, image and honor of individuals.

It is crucial to note that this right does not apply to strictly private undisclosed data, such as genetic information or sexual orientation, but to data previously published and accessible on the Internet.

Limits and balance between rights

Like any right, the right to be forgotten has limits, especially when it collides with other fundamental principles such as freedom of expression and the right to information. The solution in these cases lies in weighing: assessing which of the rights prevails according to the public interest and proportionality. For example, freedom of expression protects the dissemination of information without prior censorship, but this may be subject to subsequent restrictions when it affects the reputation or privacy of third parties, as established in the legal framework.

The Google vs. Spain case: a historical precedent

The Google v. Spain case was a milestone in the definition of the right to be forgotten. In 1997, Mario Costeja had his assets seized due to debts with Social Security. As part of the process, the Spanish Ministry of Labor published an advertisement in the newspaper La Vanguardia to auction his assets. Although the matter was resolved, more than 20 years later, when searching his name on Google, links to the pages detailing the auction still appeared, affecting his reputation.

In 2010, Costeja filed a complaint with the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) demanding that La Vanguardia remove or modify the published data and that Google unlink his name from the related links. The AEPD rejected the complaint against the newspaper arguing that the publication complied with a legal mandate. However, it ruled in favor of Costeja with respect to Google, considering that the search engine was responsible for the processing of personal data under Directive 95/46/EC.

This ruling established that search engines have the obligation to respond to legitimate requests for removal of links that violate the right to be forgotten, setting a precedent in the protection of personal data in the European Union.

Final reflection

The right to be forgotten does not aim to eliminate the past, but to moderate access to information in the digital environment. Its purpose is to prevent true facts, but lacking relevance in the present, from unfairly defining people's lives. In an era where the permanence of the digital footprint is inevitable, this right is positioned as an essential mechanism to safeguard dignity in the face of excessive online exposure.