The right to be forgotten is Article 17 in the European Data Protection Regulation draft disclosed in 2012 to supersede the regulation adopted by the European Union (EU) in 1995 to allow an individual to “determine the development of his life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past."Considering how what has been posted online or sent in e-mails has come back to haunt many, it seems necessary to adopt the right to be forgotten all over the world.

However, in contrast to such a law’s intentions, there exist many practical difficulties with such a right. Once something is posted online, it can be freely captured and saved,by numerous individuals and duplicated without, in many cases, being noticed. Although websites such as Google have implemented the infrastructure to remove requested data from its search engines, there is a limit to how completely such contents can be deleted. Therefore, the right to be forgotten has the critical drawback of not being able to be realistically guaranteed.

Moreover, there are financial difficulties in putting the regulations into practice. The cost could make it difficult for smaller companies to  put into place and operate the necessary filters to rid their systmes of data to be “forgotten.” 

 Additionally, in the process of whitewashing one’s records, useful data can be accidentally deleted. For instance, according to Wikipedia, 50 links to Wikipedia pages have been affected due to the personal information that was revealed within them and was consequently deleted The result was a chaos, since there was no strict line that differentiates personal information from the information that is publicly searched for. Google has received more than 90,000 requests to delete links, which caused much confusion due to the other information that was posted along with them.

Consequently, it seems that most of the responsibility still remains with individuals. Every article or post should be uploaded with caution, with the awareness of the possibility of its being spread and collected. Although there are efforts to protect people from being influenced by their Internet past, they are not yet completely effective. Perhaps, we are living in a world where it is impossible for us to be permanently forgotten, despite living under the protection of the right to be forgotten.