Q: How do I get Google to change my profile information? It is way out of date, and I am starting to believe it is turning off new people I meet who want to check me out on Google before even meeting for coffee. I never asked to be on Google. What can I do?
Will Shapira, ST. Paul
A: Removing your information from the Google search engine isn't easy.
Google, as a rule, doesn't let people delete information about themselves from its Web searches just because they want to.
"There is very little that we remove from search results on a discretionary basis," Google says.
In order for Google to delete information from searches, the data must pose a legal problem or be likely to cause a person specific types of harm, such as fraud or identity theft. If requested, Google will delete Social Security numbers and bank account or credit card numbers. It also will delete child pornography and trademark or copyright violations.
Alternatively, you can identify the individual websites that contain information about you and ask the webmaster of each of those sites to remove it. There is no guarantee that the webmasters will comply with your requests.
If a website does agree to remove your personal information, you can then ask Google to delete any old copies it has of that particular website (Google doesn't scan the Web for each search; it scans recently made copies of websites. So eliminating old Web page copies is important.)
