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Hi All This topic is very close to my heart .& nbsp ; I ' ve been on it for some years and have learnt a lot . Of course all this is personal experience and views of my own as I ' m not legally qualified . If you find your spent conviction published on a web site , there ' s a couple of things you can do : 1 ) You can ask Google to disable any searches for that site , so people can ' t find it .& nbsp ; I did this and they responded surprisingly quicky .& nbsp ; They remove any links / searches from their database .& nbsp ; In my case , they disabled any searches for my name and that link .& nbsp ; You can apply here : https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224?hl=en-GB2 ) My experience , often of media organisations is they will just ignore you .& nbsp ; So .... you tell them you want to request your Right To Erasure .& nbsp ; It ' s explained on the Information Commission web site here : https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/your-right-to-get-your-data-deleted/So ... you bang off your request and they have 1 month to respond .& nbsp ; Being both stupid and arrogant , they probably won ' t even reply , but ..... the data Protection Act gives a Data Controller ( them ) 1 month to reply .& nbsp ; If they don ' t , you email them informing them of this and they are now in breach of the GDPR . Of course , they might reply and just say ' get lost ', but my experience is this wakes them up a little . If you can , try and get the email address of the Data Protection Officer of the organisation you ' re dealing with .& nbsp ; You can often find this on their privacy notice on their web site . You can then make a complaint to the Information Commission for the breach .& nbsp ; This is worth doing as it ' s only an email , but be prepared for the fact the ICO are pretty much useless , deserving of & nbsp ; their score of about 1 on Trustpilot : https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/ico.org.ukThis is the lowest score possible . But all is not over , the DBS used to publish spent convictions .& nbsp ; The Human Rights organisation , Liberty took the to court saying it was a breach of the Human Rights Act .& nbsp ; Liberty won and the Judge said in his summing up : as [the conviction] recedes into the past, it becomes a part of the person’s private life
usually be the point at which it becomes spent under the 1974 [ROA] Act
more info here : https://inforrm.org/2017/02/02/spent-convictions-in-the-law-of-privacy-and-data-protection-part-1-aidan-wills/Next thing to do is quote this case and they will ( hopefully ) realise they have breached your human rights . I did have a link to the actual case , but seem to have lost it .& nbsp ; If somebody wants it , I ' ll try and find it again . One thing I tried was the Unlock page which says that Carter Ruck solicitors would take on your case on a pro - bono basis . My advice would be don ' t bother .& nbsp ; It was quite the uphill struggle to get them to reply in the first instance and when I did engage and pushed them , they said they couldn ' t do it on a pro - bono basis and wanted £ 4 . 5K to collate info and write a letter .& nbsp ; My view was that they REALLY weren ' t interested , but wish they had said so at the start , without raising my hopes and wasting my time . I get a bit of a feel now for site owners that will / won ' t help .& nbsp ; Typically they don ' t reply .& nbsp ; After 2 weeks of my application to be forgotten , I send them a chaser reminding them they have 2 weeks left to respond . I categorise sites as either ' helpful ' or ' sticky '.& nbsp ; The BBC being very sticky .& nbsp ; It took a year of my time to get them to comply with the law .& nbsp ; They hung onto this document like a dog with a bone .& nbsp ; Not sure what made the penny drop , but simultaneously , I got my MP involved and threatened to sue them for Defamation with Malice .& nbsp ; Defamation as the conviction was spent and Malice as the information was wrong .& nbsp ; Somehow , they gained sentience and removed the &# 100 ; ocument . The total cost was a lot of my time and a packet of biscuits for my MP .& nbsp ; Bargain !& nbsp ; I think it also helped that I pointed out to my MP that the BBCs ' s Data Protection Officer was now in breach of the Data Protection Act .& nbsp ; I ' m guessing she didn ' t want that on her CV 😂& nbsp ;& nbsp ; Sorry this is so long ........ I documented the whole thing with the BBC , other sites and my experience with Carter Ruck and offered it to Unlock as a personal story .& nbsp ; It was never published and have no idea if it was rejected etc as unlock have never come back to me despite chaser emails . If anyone ' s interested I ' ll post it up here .& nbsp ; It ' s a long read as it ' s a long story . As mentioned I ' ve dealt with a large number of websites publishing my spent conviction .& nbsp ; Some have been very helpful .& nbsp ; Some redacted the document quickly as requested and some simply deleted the offending section . Oh , one last bit .& nbsp ; If you think the web site owners are taking the PEE heavily and they might well be , stay polite ay all times , gently ' upping the anti ' as you go . Best of luck to you all . Cheers Steve
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