While it seems that Google is taking much of the public ire on the Right to be Forgotten issue, it should be noted that Microsoft has also been co-opted into providing RTBF services as well. In participating in the RTBF effort, Microsoft has recently inducted its Bing services to include use of location based signals to delist the URLs in question.
According to the Bing team:
Bing has expanded the scope of our Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) filtering in Europe. In the past, when Bing accepted an RTBF request, the URL would be delisted from all applicable European versions of Bing (such as Bing.fr, Bing.de, Bing.co.uk) for searches of the requestor’s name. “
However, with today’s update, the process going forward will see Microsoft using identifiers such as IP addresses to help its delisting efforts on all versions of Bing, including Bing.com and Bing services, in European countries where the removal request first originated.
If someone in France successfully requests delisting of a URL on Bing, in addition to delisting that URL from all applicable European versions of Bing, Bing will now also delist that URL for all searches of that person’s name—regardless of what version of Bing is being used—if the search originates from a location within France.”
The changes are rolling out currently and are planned to be applied to all valid European RTBF’s soon. The move also retroactively includes prior removal request, meaning alerts submitted before the change will not benefit from Bing’s new location based delisting identifiers.
While the Right to be Forgotten remains a controversial debate of internet tampering versus privacy, Microsoft appears set to comply with user requests for the time being. Let us know in the comments what you think about Microsoft’s Right to be Forgotten performance.
