A new ‘Right to be Forgotten’ standard set by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) will go into effect starting June. (image: KobizMedia/ Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, May 26 (Korea Bizwire) – Almost everyone has a skeleton or two in their closet. But once this sensitive information is posted online, it becomes almost permanent.
A new ‘Right to be Forgotten’ standard set by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) will go into effect starting June. But many questions still remain as to its effectiveness.
According to IT industry watchers, in order for individuals to delete past posts they must present the online service provider with evidence that proves their right to the post. But simply submitting one’s ID card is unlikely to get the job done.
The majority of the information that people wish to erase is from older websites that their account has already been deleted from. However, Korean law obliges online businesses to dispose of all personal information once a user deletes their account. As such, there is no way for a business to cross-reference an individual with a post of concern.
This leads to a more complicated process, in which the person making the request must provide documented evidence as to the content of the post that could maybe point to their ownership.
Due to such complexities, experts claim the new standard lacks effectiveness.
However, the KCC is not planning to make inaccessible all content based only on past IDs, since it could result in online censorship or abuse of the new standard.
It explained, however, that if the same ID was used to make multiple posts, some of which contained personal information, the owner could request their removal by providing evidence to personal information matching the content online.
By Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
