News

Google Update Makes It Easier To Remove Private Information

The company has also strengthened parental controls and will blur explicit imagery in search results by default.

Published

3 years ago

August 4, 2023

Nour Nasir

Google

A new Google update will make it easier to control information appearing in search results. Last year, the company released a tool to help people remove phone numbers, home and email addresses. The latest update will add further features to the “results about you” tool to make it even more effective.

google privacy update

A new dashboard will appear over the next few days, letting users know when personal information pops up in search results. When alerted, you’ll be able to ask Google to remove the offending results.

google privacy update 2

Earlier this year, the company debuted a new feature for Google One users that crawls the dark web to see if information has been included in data breaches. The latest update seems to work similarly for the wider internet, further protecting your privacy.

The tool can be accessed in the Google app by tapping your profile photo and choosing “results about you” or from a dedicated webpage if you’re using a PC or laptop. The new feature is only available in the US for now, but Google plans to roll out the update to a wider audience very soon.

Also Read: The Largest Data Breaches In The Middle East

Meanwhile, Google is also implementing an upgrade that will allow people to not only remove non-consensual explicit images from search results, but also consensual photos that they no longer want to be seen.

Finally, Google is also updating its parental controls and SafeSearch. Explicit imagery will be blurred by default, and it will soon become much easier to access parental controls.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.