Nope, they never asked for anything like that. It was a few years ago but I think it was just a picture of my passport to prove I am me. No DBS or any other documentation was needed.

Thanks --- I will check out your links earlier in thread --  well my thinking is now.. their default mode would be to remove the links under those circumstances, so I'll make my case as bland and factual as possible, with emphasis on the rehab law.

Do they ask for a photocopy of your blank basic CRB certificate?

Yeah! It is straight forward. I can't remember what page it is on in this thread but I put links and a wee blurb and stuff about what I used. 

But essentially stated how the links/articles are harming my rehabilitation and contravene the rehabilitation of offenders act as well as stating how I'm not a famous person/politician etc. so they are no longer of any public relevance and should be removed under GDPR.

Then I got an email back I think a couple of days later saying they'll remove the links. Then ever since then any new links that have popped up I simply reply to that confirmation email with the links and they have removed them without any fuss or issues. Usually within about 24-48hrs too.

So yeah I'll say I'm 40 with a career now, my conviction is spent, and what you're reading about is some webcam malarkey from 2007 (college days), that really should be behind me.

The crazy thing is, I had already "outgrown" my conviction when it was handed to me in 2016.
I returned from my career in California to my mother's house in Scotland for xmas 2016.
Was there 3 days, when the police came crashing in, in search of jpegs. And I was like "fine whatever", thinking maybe my brother had been bandying around pics of his 16yo GF, and that's what they were after.
But in the house were a bunch of my old hard drives etc with heaps of deleted files on them from 9-10 years ago.
And I assumed they had been discarded anyway. 

Apparently the stuff they unearthed was not the stuff that tipped them off. They had simply been tipped off by a dirty meme I had posted to 4Chan in 2014, involving the girl in Jurassic Park getting her tits out to divert the attention of a T-rex. The image component that made the meme possible was an illegal one. 

So instead of returning to California, I spent the rest of the xmas period being poked and prodded in a Scottish police cell being spoken to like I was Bart Simpson or some fundamentally unserious character.

And now there are stupid articles talking about me, giving my mature age, citing this immature behaviour etc (the 2007 stuff and the Jurassic Park stuff), defining me utterly in to 2026. My tactic thus far has been to brazen it out totally, and continue to live my life in such a way that nobody could possibly believe I am the person in the article. It seems to work -- people who google me look right past it. 

Am I right in thinking it should be short and sweet? Lean on the ROO act etc, mention the crime is old and that I have a career now etc?

Hey there! 

I'm afraid I haven't - That's not say it isn't possible, it's just I haven't seen it! 

What I will advise though is if your sentence is spent then Google tend to be fine with removing stuff, it's when you're still 'active' they get a bit funky with it. The avenue I went down with Google was really pushing the 'Rehabilitation of Offenders Act' angle and how the articles were preventing me from moving on and becoming a productive member of society again.

Mine is in the same lane as this but 18 months custodial and happened via voyeurism, 2016 conviction but 2007 incident.
Have you seen any succesful removal anecdotes of this nature?

Yeah, ICO are supposed to be in charge of data and all this stuff. 

What had happened was early in my conviction when I was trying to get links removed, Google refused to remove them at the time. I went to ICO and they advised they had passed my email and details over the webmaster of one of the sites as a request to remove the details so like "John Doe (johndoe@gmail.com) has requested you remove the following link(s) from your website for reasons blah blah blah".

Suffice to say they didn't take down the link from their website and instead hit up their Facebook groups to plaster me even more in a bid to, and I quote, "Make me famous".

" ICO have also been completely useless and in the first instance actually caused more issues by accidentally giving my contact details to a vigilante group. But I digress..."

That sounds pretty bad actually...what kind of people are these?

It's hard to say without knowing what you've told them or what your offence is etc.. 

I had to send some court documents to begin with, I can't honestly remember what they were specifically, I think it was just the main sentencing stuff which obviously has the dates etc.

Then just a wee blurb like:

  "I was convicted of [OFFENCE] and sentenced on [DATE]. As of [DATE] my sentence has now become spent and under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act I am to be treated as any regular citizen. These/this article is preventing me from moving forward with my life and going back to being a productive member of society. I am not a celebrity, politician, or a high-profile individual so there is absolutely no longer any public interest in these links still being available."

Just something along those lines will do it. 

If you go back to the very first page of this post you can see my steps I went through.

"We need more information in order to process your request. Please reply to this request and provide documentation confirming the length of the sentence and the years during which it took place. This information will allow us to evaluate if Google’s reference to this content is still relevant and in the public interest. need more information in order to process your request. Please reply to this request and provide documentation confirming the length of the sentence and the years during which it took place. This information will allow us to evaluate if Google’s reference to this content is still relevant and in the public interest."

I don't understand this. Surely the news story itself reveals the dates and sentence length. Why are they asking for court documents etc which corroborates the news story?

Surely we all agree already --- the news story is somewhere between false and true-but-embarassing.

-Ian