In many parts of the world it is illegal for a recruiting party to search for information on a candidate without their consent.

Whichever parts of the world that may be, you can guarantee that it happens anyways.

Unenforceable rules are never followed.

What are laws that prohibit it?

One example is Finnish legislation: https://finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2004/20040759#L2P4 Sadly only available in Finnish. The law applies both to employees and candidates.

EDIT: Looks like there is an English translation. See section 4 of: https://finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2004/en20040759_2019034...

I recently Googled myself, and in the first page of results I ran across some shit AI website that scrapes random web content about people and attempts to summarize it. It got my current occupation completely and comically wrong -- as in, it has nothing at all to do with tech.

If you're trying to figure out anything about me from social media or other such random web pages, I don't care to have anything to do with you, and I don't care what you're led to believe about me. I suppose this is born of privilege, but the only contacts I care to make are directly via people I already have a relationship with.

Just did the same, and the form to get your data removed asks for 3 items of personal information "to confirm your identity" lol.

Edit: the site I found was "zoominfo".

The only personal information they're going to get from me will be what's in my libel lawsuit.