192.com

squeaky

Deleted_User wrote: »

Hi,

I received this back from findmypast.com this morning:

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately we are unable to remove your birth record from our site as it is a public record.

These records are provided by the General Registers Office, if you require further details you will have to contact them directly.

It for sure is a public record, but it's not their public record.

The question is, how did they obtain the right to re-publish any darn public record they please? And at a fee?

It's probably not going to turn out to be illegal because they'd have been hammered ages ago. But it's sure as heck disturbing/distasteful... choose your own words that pass the swear filter

[Deleted User]

Well it looks like they are not going to give in on this.

In the United Kingdom, certain records are considered as public domain, including the General Register Office index of Births, Marriages and Deaths. This means that these indexes are made freely available to any person, at any time, for any purpose that they wish to use them for. Examples of other records that are made available in this way include company details made available by Companies House.

Many companies and private individuals make use of these public indexes and publish them in a variety of different ways, including findmypast. In our case, we make this public information available to help people to trace their family history, and removing a publicly available record would make this task harder for others. We do not remove any records which are public domain, as they are easily obtainable elsewhere.

If you object to the government releasing your birth index information (which is in any case extremely limited) into the public domain, we would suggest that you raise this directly with the provider of the original indexes – in this case the General Register Office.

squeaky

#sings And the wheels on the bus go round and round...

Well, it's highly unlikely that the General Register Office will remove your records. From the sound of the post above, even though they don't cite a reference, it's unlikely that GRO provide for citizens to limit who does and does not have access.

You can but ask, I suppose.

[Deleted User]

Just thought I'd mention that I have found another web site like 192.com. The website named below have removed my address details and birth record so this asks the question if one can do it why can't the other?

website lookuppeople.co.uk

squeaky

Darn good question.

The responses you have had earlier have stood on the principle that it's public domain and not deletable. They're kinda bound to stand on that because the reliability of their searches, that people pay for, will be dependent on how complete their reports are.

They haven't cited a source for their legal right to do so.

Is there any case law that says third party providers of public domain information are obliged not to display at the request of the person concerned? Anybody?

squeaky

A thought...

You have asked these people to delete the record.

Their replies, perfectly properly state that they cannot delete them.

They have, rather pedantically responded to your exact request.

What if you ask them to stop displaying the record?

Oliver14

squeaky wrote: »

It for sure is a public record, but it's not their public record.

The question is, how did they obtain the right to re-publish any darn public record they please? And at a fee?

The clues in the word Public.

[Deleted User]

Just a update for anyone who is following this thread, I emailed both 192.com and findmypast.com over a week ago and requested that they stop displaying my record but have heard nothing back.

WestonDave

They won't - unless there is a law which gives you the right to enforce this (which there isn't - all public data like this is open access) then there is no point in 192 having a less complete database than other providers - all that would do is drive all their traffic to the GRO site where all the removed information will still be available.

Its 2011, public data now means publicly available on the internet. The only route to change that is via your MP.