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O Brown
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 6,
Visits: 65
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+x+xHiya Please let me know the steps you took and if there was anything specific to write down on requests. I have a few local new paper articles which I need removing and my conviction is spent. Hey there, there are a couple of prerequisites to sort first. - Sentence must be spent - You mention yours is, so that's great!
- You can't be a public/famous person - If you're a politician, famous musician, or even a prominent local businessman then you'll likely get rejected
- A list of all the URLs you want removed - Spent a little bit of time Googling yourself under various parameters to make sure you catch everything. "John Smith, John Smith City, John Smith Sentenced, John Smith [CRIME]" you get the ide
After you've gotten that sorted head to their removals form which you can access here: https://reportcontent.google.com/forms/rtbfThe form is fairly self-explanatory and simple enough to navigate. - Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974
- Irrelevance/Outdated
- Inappropriate
- Not in the Public Interest
I have redacted some of the information here (personal info and stuff) but to give you an idea this is what I wrote: I request that the above URL link/s about me, should not be included as a search result for
the following reasons:
Irrelevant - These are referencing a crime that happened nearly half a decade ago. My sentence has long been spent and under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 I am no longer seen as a danger to the public and should be treated as such.
Inappropriate - Some of these links, mainly the [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] ones are the result of harassment. The [REDACTED] account in question has also spent time coming to my home to harrass me as a result of these searches putting myself and loved ones at risk. It is also severely affecting my ability to get back into gainful employment and go back to being a productive member of society.
Not In The Public Interest - I am not a famous or a public figure. As mentioned, this crime was nearly half a decade ago and it has been considered spent for years under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Some of the news sites have long since archived the links due to their irrelevance yet the archives still exist.
I have spoken with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) who have advised to approach you directly first for an amicable solution.
If I do not received a satisfactory response, I will consider taking this matter further with the Information Commissioners Office.
Yours faithfully,
NAME Took about 2-3 weeks from what I remember to get an initial response, I then got an email back saying they'll removed them all. From then on all I do is reply to that email with any new links that pop up and they're gone in like 24-48 hours. Hope this helps! YAHOOOOOOOO Just want to say THANK YOU!!!!! Just got the below reply from google Hello,Thanks for reaching out to us.We had a look at these URLs: We'll delist these URLs from search results for queries related to your name. We'll delist them in your country, and from other European versions of Google Search. It may take a few hours for this to happen.The content itself will still be online, but you can ask the site's webmaster to take it down. You can learn how to contact a site's webmaster on our Help Center.
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Evan Davis
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 80,
Visits: 2.7K
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+xThanks for your help, it’s has taken Google 3 weeks to remove links but now gone !Does anyone know if it possible to remove Google autocomplete searches of your name or do these disappear over time please?Thanks Auto-complete search results are based on the volume of search requests over the preceding 90 days. They're not (to my knowledge) covered by the RTBF. There's also a "local" cookie Google uses on your devices to track your own search history - so it may be that the autocomplete is more prominent (ie happens further back in the word) for you than it would for others. Over time, as the total amount of search results undertaken using your name falls (as less information will be hopefully be available, so people less likely to search often), the likelihood of your name showing in autocomplete will also reduce.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All views, opinions & contributions are my own and do not represent the views of Unlock unless specifically stated.
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BeKind
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 3,
Visits: 116
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Thanks for your help, it’s has taken Google 3 weeks to remove links but now gone !
Does anyone know if it possible to remove Google autocomplete searches of your name or do these disappear over time please?
Thanks
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Aradia
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 24,
Visits: 2.4K
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I'm sure I read somewhere that someone went to the actual newspaper that posted the article online and asked them to take it down. Once everything is spent. Has anyone ever heard of that. I wondered if I should use one of the internet deletion companies and ask them is that something they do or have had any luck with it.
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marcovanba
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 33,
Visits: 2K
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+x+xHow long do Bing / Yahoo usually take to reply to a 1st enquiry? Just checked on my last attempt. About 1 week. Request sent off on the 11th of April and got my response on the 19th. Been waiting way longer than that, will chase them up... thanks for replying
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khafka
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 385,
Visits: 20K
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+xHow long do Bing / Yahoo usually take to reply to a 1st enquiry? Just checked on my last attempt. About 1 week. Request sent off on the 11th of April and got my response on the 19th.
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marcovanba
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 33,
Visits: 2K
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How long do Bing / Yahoo usually take to reply to a 1st enquiry?
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khafka
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 385,
Visits: 20K
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+xI've had the same issues with the myredrose website but Google have removed the new ULRs when requested. Has anyone had successes with removing links from Bing\Yahoo? Google have agreed to remove links to my spent conviction but Bing and Yahoo have been using the "Still in the public interest" reason for not removing the links, The ICO is a waste of time every time I contact them they side with Bing and Yahoo, I think once they know you are classed as a SO they don't want to know. Yeah, Google have thankfully removed the red rose ones without any fuss and (touch wood) that's me clear for a bit there now on Google. I approached Bing a few months ago and was given the "public interest" pish as well. I did lodge it with ICO in April but I'm still waiting to hear back, I chased them up in May and was advised they were behind and just starting to pick up January-February case work at that point so I'm probably looking about August-September before I get any movement on that. I do remember a while ago when I first tried to get the results moved Google refused due to public interest so I went to ICO and it was a disaster as t hey ended up passing on my complaint and contact details to one of those offender register websites basically saying "Hey, this guy wants you to take down the post about him!" - I'll give you two guesses how that went down. I raised a complaint with ICO at the time but they didn't really seem to give a fuck either. Not tried Yahoo yet, my plan was to focus on each search engine individually otherwise I could see myself getting into a bit of a mess.
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david123
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 26,
Visits: 2.4K
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I've had the same issues with the myredrose website but Google have removed the new ULRs when requested. Has anyone had successes with removing links from Bing\Yahoo? Google have agreed to remove links to my spent conviction but Bing and Yahoo have been using the "Still in the public interest" reason for not removing the links, The ICO is a waste of time every time I contact them they side with Bing and Yahoo, I think once they know you are classed as a SO they don't want to know.
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khafka
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 385,
Visits: 20K
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+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xTook about 2-3 weeks from what I remember to get an initial response, I then got an email back saying they'll removed them all. From then on all I do is reply to that email with any new links that pop up and they're gone in like 24-48 hours. Have you done the additional ones recently? I had a few links removed from my initial request then any subsequent ones that popped up were removed simply by replying to the original email. I noticed a new one the other day (same source, an archive page with a slight mention) so emailed but i've heard nothing back in nearly two weeks, despite chasing. Not super recently, thankfully I wasn't reported on too much so it limits the potential for the spread. Most recent I flagged up on the 11th of April (2025) and got a reply on the 18th of April that it have been removed, which is definitely longer than usual. Just for reference here I have finally had a reply removing it. The total time for a response was over 3 weeks which had me worried when normally it's in the realms of 3 hours! You've just reminded me to have a wee check and 4 URLs have popped up 😬 Seems to be Google's weird way of showing them as they're URLs they've removed in the past but these have a mobile prefix despite being on desktop. Either way, pinged them off to Google so interesting to see how long it is for me! It's Google's way of indexing. They choose a 'canonical' main version of the URL and index that. When you remove it they then work their way down the list to the next one. I'm on version 5 or 6 of the same article. It's a bit whack a mole but easy enough. Yeah, thought as much. You can tell by the URL just being slightly different it's obviously the same article. For example some more have now popped up since those removals with https://madebyredrose.co.uk/abuser/[MY NAME]?category=14, then when that is removed a new one pops up like https://madebyredrose.co.uk/abuser/[MY NAME]?category=9 and so on, mostly seem to be this one new website that started up in November 2024. Feel a bit aggrieved they added me to their database (that totally isn't a database, honest, police!) as my offence was spent as of February 2023 so I was a free man for about a year and a half prior to their website starting up, their website also seems to have a section on an offenders 'profile' where they add in their social media profiles. Surely there's some kind of harassment/legal issue there? ... But I digress. Got the alert setup to ping me weekly though so fingers crossed I got that setup right! EDIT:
Actually, the more I think about it the more that website annoys me - I've sent an enquiry off to Police Scotland to see what their stance is on it as they're not just linking to news articles as others appear to do as some kind of alleged 'legal loophole'. Thought I'd also follow up on this as I actually just had a call back from Police Scotland about it. The short summary is: There are no harassment laws in Scotland, them publishing personal information such as phone numbers and addresses is perfectly legal. Only if something happens off the back of it will/can they step in and typically it'd only be the person doing the attack that would be dealt with - The person facilitating it isn't liable which seems a bit odd to me but I digress. We had a bit of a debate about over it and I likened it to drug dealing in how it makes more sense to go after the drug dealers as a higher priority than those doing drugs but they weren't interested. They also reiterated that they'd be in the police for 20 years (as it meant something) and that there is no harassment law in Scotland, which is verifiably false as here it is, covered under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/40/crossheading/scotland What about the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act? Once a conviction becomes spent, you then have a legal right to live as if the conviction never happened. Could the ROA not be used in such a way to stop the website from publishing and repeatedly altering the links? :edit I looked into it further and apparently not, ROA can not prevent other websites from publishing spent convictions. I think something should be done about that as if you have a legal right to live as if the conviction never happened, how can you if websites such as these are allowed to retain / publish data? Yeah, it sucks but it's a discussion and issue for someone with a bigger brain and a higher bank balance than me to resolve! haha To be fair to the website - I'm not convinced they were manually altering the links with the numbers, I feel it's just an automatic thing their CMS does for indexing purposes and likely due to the categories assigned on the article they made. Google don't notify webmasters when they remove a search result and "my" profile page looks to have been completely inactive since the day it was posted. As an aside, I'm looking to potentially be quite cheeky though if I can get away with it. Their domain expires on the 26th of November this year, got a reminder set to see if I can snipe it lol.
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