The general process you’ll need to follow to get your images removed from Google is as follows. Google will comply with these requests, but it can be tedious to go through them, particularly if an image is widespread or there are numerous images to remove. These are the general causes for removal. The image has been ordered removed by a court for other reasons.The image is violating copyright or intellectual property rights.The image is hosted on a website that has extortionate removal policies.The image is involuntary fake pornography or “ deep-fake” content.The image contains non-consensual intimate or explicit content, or “revenge porn.”.The image contains sensitive/personal financial, medical, or national ID information.Those circumstances are itemized in Google’s help center. They can do this, but they don’t, outside of specific circumstances. The second is to get Google to remove the image directly. This is the general process we’ll outline below.
The first is to get the image removed from its source, and then tell Google that the image no longer exists and that it should be removed from the search. There are two operations available to you to get an image removed from Google. While it might not seem like the reason you want an image removed should matter, the truth is, certain avenues open up to you in some circumstances. So, what happens when you want to get your presence removed from the internet? Whether you want to use the European Right to be Forgotten, or just manually remove images to avoid having your face attached to your name online, you’re probably going to need to do some legwork. Their technology isn’t quite accurate enough for identifying individuals, though they’re definitely working on it. Google also might use their image recognition algorithms to identify the contents of images, though they often skip doing this for people, and focus more on inanimate objects. Someone else’s page where they mention your name might show their photos when you search for your name. A social media profile might index your profile picture tied to your name. Most of that information comes from the context on the page an article that you wrote with your byline might index the top image as an image tagged with your name. Google takes a lot of information into account when they index images. When someone searches for your name, what comes up? Chances are good that many of the results are either your photos, photos that include you, photos that you’ve posted tied to your accounts, or photos others have posted that include you in them. Google’s image search is just as prevalent as their web search. What we haven’t covered, though, is removing photos. Much has been written about removing your personal information from Google’s organic web search, which often involves targeting data brokers and playing an eternal game of whack-a-mole with new sites that pop up.