The right to be forgotten is one of the ways the right to privacy may find protection. In fact, this rights entails the procedure through which the data subject demand to be “forgotten” by the press commentary. Specifically, the right to be forgotten entails that public interest around a certain fact is restricted to a given space of time beyond which, the public interest weakens till it disappear. Therefore, in given situations, the data subject is entitled to claim the erasure of all personal data.

Italian and European right to be forgotten is established by article 17 of General Data Protection Regulation. According to the GDPR, there are certain conditions according to which the data subjects is entitled to obtain erasure of personal data. For instance, when personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purpose for which it has been collected. Again, the data subject may obtain the erasure of his/her personal data when he/she denied the consent but data has been processed anyway. On the other hand, the right to be forgotten cannot be claimed whether data are processed for:

–        Right to information;

–        Archiving Purposes;

–        Historical and Scientific research.

The right to information exists where the following conditions apply;

–        Social utility of the information

–        Truthfulness of information reported;

–        Civilized and honest wording

In 2018, the Court of Justice of European Union established that the right to be forgotten falls within the framework of protection of private life, according to article 8 of European Convention of Human Right. Search engine operators are responsible for data appearing within webpages that display information and data around a given data subject. In this case, the data subject is able to ask the erasure of such information to the search engine operator.

The European Data Protection Board has then published a list of criteria that may help Member States Data protection authorities to decide, whether or not, if the right to be forgotten request shall be accepted or denied. Among these criteria we can find the fact that the data subject is a public person, a minor, data concerning professional or personal life.

Should you need any advice and assistance in exercising your right to be forgotten please contact us through the chat-box or the form you can find in this page.