Question

Do you believe an individual should have the right to be forgotten, that is, to remove information about themselves from the internet? if so, should this right be limited, and if so, how?

Answer 1

Any individual has information that can be classified into the mandatory information and optional information. Mandatory information includes, name, address, education, biometric details and other vital statistics that are used to identify that person. This kind of information should not be deleted. Optional information includes day to day status updates, posting and other related information that are fast updated. Such, information can be erased. Hence, there should be right to be forgotten, but in a limited capacity. Such rights should be exercised when somebody wants to delete the social media profile, email accounts or accounts at shopping portals among the others. The information regarding the person, can be misused by the other people. So, right to erase or delete these accounts should be given to the individuals.

The limitation to the rights is applied in following ways:

1. Taking initial confirmation from the person regarding the limited ability to delete the data whenever he or she submits it.

2. Important and vital data that establishes the identity of the person, cannot be deleted and it should be pre-informed to the person.

3. Data stored for the security and safety reasons, cannot be removed either on internet or from offline sources.