"Past cleaning" service

This is a pilot program launched in 2023 by the Korea Personal Information Protection Commission, which gives citizens the ability to erase digital traces created when they were minors. Since its launch, the service has received positive responses from many young Koreans.

Posts are eligible for deletion if they contain a name, date of birth, phone number, contact address, or photo. When a request is submitted to the committee, staff will verify the information and ask the site administrator to delete the post or restrict searches. Once the process is complete, the applicant will be notified of the outcome.

For content created after the age of 19 or without personal information, the commission staff will guide users on how to delete it themselves.

Such is the case of a person known as A. When he was in elementary school, he made videos imitating popular trends of the time and posted them on a social media platform. When he entered middle school, these videos accidentally became the reason for his friends to laugh at him. He wanted to delete the posts but lost his account information and had difficulty finding help from the customer service center, leaving the male student helpless.

"It was only when I learned about the government-run information 'erasure' service that, with the guidance of the staff, I was able to easily remove the entire post," A said.

Another case is B - a man who shared many photos with his ex-girlfriend on a social networking site to record memories. Recently, after breaking up, B tried to delete these posts but failed because he forgot his password.

Not wanting past images to be known by many people, B sought out an "erasure" service and received support.

The Korea Personal Information Protection Commission said that since the service launched in late April 2023, it has received more than 17,000 requests for support. More than 16,100 deletion requests have been completed. In the first four months of 2024 alone, more than 6,000 deletion requests were made, indicating that the service is becoming increasingly popular.

After analyzing the results of the pilot program and collecting feedback from surveys, the Commission expanded the age limit for posting on social media from “under 18” to “under 19” earlier this year. The age limit for registering for the service was also significantly expanded from “under 24” to “under 30,” allowing more people to use the service.

"The information whitewashing service not only supports the deletion of online posts, but also plays an important role in raising awareness of protecting personal information at a young age," Lee Jeong-ryeol, secretary-general of the committee, emphasized.

Currently only legitimate posts can be requested to be removed, but in the future, the government is planning to expand the scope to include illegal spy cams.