The Right to Be Forgotten: If I could restart my life, I would like to be able to erase …

The EU’s General Data Privacy Regulation established the “right to be forgotten” (RTBF). Although the practicality and meaning of the RTBF has been hotly debated, little is known about exactly what kinds of information people desire to delete. We survey consumers in both the U.S. and the U.K. and measure their level of interest in being able to exercise a RTBF for eight different data types We find that consumers in both the US and the UK are much more interested in exercising a RTBF over information about their Internet search history, their posts to online social networks and subsequent repostings of that information by others, their consumer behavior (i.e., purchases), and data collected by the Internet of Things than they are about being able to delete information in public records. The level of interest in a RTBF also differs across demographic factors (country, gender, age, and education level)