Google stops processing spam reports with personal info
▼ Summary
– Google updated its spam report page to state that submissions containing personally identifying information will not be processed or used.
– A new highlight box warns users not to include personally identifying information, as such submissions will be discarded.
– Google must send submission text to site owners if a manual action is issued, to comply with regulations and explain the action’s context.
– The previous policy, which sent all submission text verbatim to site owners, raised industry concerns about privacy and legal repercussions.
– Users can safely resubmit a spam report without personally identifying information, as reports with such details are simply not processed.
Google has quietly revised its spam reporting system for the second time in roughly a week, introducing a critical change: any spam report that contains personally identifying information will now be rejected and not processed. This update arrives just days after the company confirmed it would share those reports with the site owners being reported.
What has changed. The search giant added a highlighted notice to its spam report page, outlining two key points:
- Do not include any personally identifying information in your spam report.The new text reads:“Don’t include any personally identifying information in your submission. To comply with regulations, we must send the submission text to the site owner to help them understand the context of a manual action, if one is issued. Because of this, we won’t process your submission if we determine it contains personally identifying information to protect privacy. Not including such information fully ensures your information is safe and prevents your submission from being discarded.”What was previously stated. As reported just last week, Google had originally said:“If we issue a manual action, we send whatever you write in the submission report verbatim to the site owner to help them understand the context of the manual action.”That earlier stance sparked widespread concern across the industry. The worry wasn’t just about outing competitors or spammers. There were also serious legal and privacy risks tied to having one’s identity or personal details forwarded directly to a potentially malicious site owner. Google now frames this shift as a matter of regulatory compliance, acknowledging that it cannot share personally identifying information under current rules.Why this matters. If you plan to file a spam report, your top priority must be stripping out any personal data. The upside is that if you accidentally include such details, you do not need to panic. Google will simply discard the report without forwarding your information to the reported site. You can then resubmit a clean version. This change protects your privacy while still allowing legitimate spam concerns to be flagged, provided you follow the new guidelines.
