Privacy protection means protecting individuals' private matters including thoughts, acts and conversations from being unreasonably disclosed by others or intervened by others. Protecting one's privacy became a recognized right of individuals in around the middle of the 20th century.
As progress in computer and telecommunication technologies brought about a situation in which an individuals’ own information is collected and managed to a large degree by others, it also became a recognized right to make claims for corrections or deletions of such information managed by others (right to self-control of one’s own personal information). In recent years, there have been court decisions that order major search engines to delete hyperlinks to individuals upon their request from search results. However, debates are still under way as there are those that insist that, in consideration of the freedom of expression and freedom of the press, judgement must be made cautiously as to how far such rights are extended.
