I don't want to show up in Google

[kiwisanz]

Hi all,

I realised that when I search for my name in Google my Spotify profile with my private user name and a bunch of data shows publicly in Google search. I was shocked at the lack of privacy as username is PII (Personal Identifiable Information) which is extremely protected under GDPR law. I checked settings and it doesn't seem like I can change this. I can change "Show my follower and following lists on my public profile" which doesn't seem to do anything as my lists are still shown, but most importantly doesn't address my profile being publicly listed in Google together with my username in the first place.

I tried to contact Spotify but even posting here took me like 30min to figure out. My next step is to report this to the EU GDPR commission, but I thought I'd post here and see if there's a step I've missed before!

Best regards,

K

[Maxim]

Hey @kiwisanz,

Thanks for coming to the Community. 

Search engines like Google use automated services to browse, gather and index any and all web pages and content they find on public websites and services, after which they are added to search results and tied to certain keywords. The information you mentioned has been indexed and made visible on Google as these automated services have found it.

However, the Spotify Customer Support Team can issue a takedown request with Google to remove the search result tied to the information of concern. You can find more information about how to contact them here.

[kiwisanz]

Thanks for your reply. That's, however, not how Google search (or any
search engine) works. I know it because I work there. For Google to index
your site you need to give it access. You need to proactively publish your
site to the public and make it crawlable. Spotify has decided to do this
with my personal information, which happens to be illegal as I never gave
my consent.

The solution you propose of Spotify requesting Google to take it down is
absolutely ridiculous because 1. Spotify can just unpublish my content
directly without need from Google 2. That would only remove it from
Google but it would make it publicly accessible anyway. In other words, the
URL would still work and would still violate GDPR laws. At the end of the
day, a search engine is just an easy way of accessing publicly accessible
content, but content is publicly accessible regardless of whether it shows
in a search engine. The mechanism you describe is for the case when someone
wants legal content about them (legal being the key word) to be removed and
they don't have the authority to take it down directly. Very very different
case.

[Maxim]

Hey again, @kiwisanz,

If you haven’t already, the best thing to do is reach out to Support about this. They’re the ones with the tools to check and flag it to the right team if needed.

You can contact them here.

Hope this helps! 🙂