A recent report from Bloomberg claims that Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has started erasing medical records from search results.
Bloomberg reported that the company has decided to remove personal medical records from its search results. Google even followed up the move with an edit to its policy stage to accompany the changes. However, the company is still to make a formal public announcement about the changes. This is also not the first time that Google has employed such a move. It previously removed web pages related to financial information such as credit card details. It is the company’s mandate to pull down any content that violates copyright laws.
“Confidential, personal medical records of private people,” reads the line that Google added to content removed from search on Thursday with regards to the new changes.
Google particularly aims to prevent the uploading of sensitive information without consent. Such an incidents that took place in December last year when a pathology lab in India accidentally uploaded medical records containing sensitive data of more than 43,000 patients. The records were indexed in Google’s search results, thus exposing sensitive data including names and HIV blood test results. The new changes are specifically aimed at preventing a recurrence of such incidents and Google is convinced that it would be in the interest of patients for their private medical records to remain private.
Google took similar steps against so-called “revenge porn” two years ago after it became a pesky problem. The company’s move on the matter made it easier for people to have such non-consensual content removed from search results. The new changes announced by Bloomberg add to the efforts that the firm has been making towards its search engine as well as online services.
Google also announced earlier this year that it would start taking action against “fake news” through direct feedback tools and improved search ranking. This is likely to trigger politically motivated censorship however with political opponents providing negative feedback to sources with perspectives they do not agree with. This came after the company received a lot of criticism for promoting and hosting supposedly misleading articles in its search results.
Alphabet stock closed the latest trading session on Thursday at $976.62.