Knowledge is based on forgetting, and learning is based on unlearning old patterns. This is important.

But on a more practical notion, right to be forgotten is more than just the ability to erase your personal embarrassing past on the internet. As commissioner Vivian Reding pointed out that one of the key provisions of the right to be forgotten is that “If an individual no longer wants his personal data to be processed or stored by a data controller, and if there is no legitimate reason for keeping it, the data should be removed from their system.”

This is important to me.

Last month I wanted to close “delete” my evernote account because of the security breach at evernote. But it turns out evernote does not let you delete your account. You can disable the account, but not delete. That means that evernote will store my account info for ever, and possibly the deleted notes in some archived manner.

Another example is Netflix. Even if you delete your account, it retains all your profile, preferences, payment details and any other associated information with your account forever. There is no way to get that deleted.

The right to be forgotten will help me in getting this situation remedied by forcing the service provider to delete my information once there is no longer a legitimate reason to keep it.

Saqib