Remove Name from Google

lou365

Hi does anyone have any idea how to get your name removed from google or search engine websites. I work as a volunteer for ex-offenders and it is proving very difficult for some clients to obtain employment or courses as their name is on the top of a google website for any crimes they have committed.. Any ideas i would be very grateful.

Guest101

New laws allow people to choose to be forgotten.

However since court decisions are 'public' i dont know whether this would apply to those situations.

Someone may come along with more info, but it's an interesting topic.

David301

I think you would find it an almost impossible task to achieve this. A search engine directs a searcher to specific articles and websites. If the persons crime was news worthy then it will obviously appear when the name is typed into the engine.

This is definitely an important modern day warning to people to think before you do something.

Once the information is online you will never escape it!

InsideInsurance

You need to go to https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch&hl=en-GB with each page you want to have removed however you arent supposed to be able to get things removed simply because you dont like them but because they are inaccurate, out of date etc

lou365

Thanks will definately be interested to see if anyone knows anything!

DS4215

I understand that you can ask search engines to remove links to pages that are defamatory or incorrect, but you can't make them remove links to pages that are truthful. So, a link to a court report or a newspaper report on a conviction would not be something that could be removed, unless it was inaccurate, but pages containing allegations that are later unsubstantiated probably could be.

onomatopoeia99

Information can be removed from search engine results in EU, the sites themselves can't be taken down unless defamatory. See "right to be forgotten".

Going to google.com will still get the full search results though, even if accessed from the UK.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Perhaps it should be considered that they aren't disclosing their convictions if it's requiring a quick google to find out what they've done?


I'd have thought it would be better for you to drop off a google search, lest one of your clients looks you up. I know when I worked with offenders, it was made very clear to me that, for my own safety, I had to keep everything about me secret - and I found through FB that not only did I go to school with somebody who became a prison officer, I also attended with some very violent individuals. Including a child abuser (google actually provided the details of the conviction) who was incarcerated at the other's place of work, and was very angry about it, posting references to knowing how to ensure *somebody* got their comeuppance.

Savvy_Sue

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

Perhaps it should be considered that they aren't disclosing their convictions if it's requiring a quick google to find out what they've done?

I agree, surely an introduction to disclosing safely would be a better bet ...

OP, I don't know who you work with, but eg NACRO has a useful guide. Although it talks about situations where the applicant HAS to disclose (because there's going to be a DBS check), it may be wise to do so even if the employer can 'only' google.

belisha-beacon

There's two sides to this. Obviously, if application forms are asking for convictions then it's best for people to declare them or they could lose any job/course place once deception is discovered. In this scenario, the best thing that could be done is to help people write an explanation of what they've learnt from their crime and how it has made them want to improve in the future (saying this as someone who has in the past reviewed applications for universities)

If the conviction doesn't need to be declared, either because the form doesn't ask or because it is spent, but there's problems with people finding out about it anyway, I'd suggest looking into how to get lots of positive stuff about the person online. There's an interesting article by Jon Ronson that covers this sort of thing. The second bit of it is about a woman whose public shaming over a photo she'd taken kept coming up on the top of internet searches. A company worked with her to get more positive information out there, that would be more relevant and that would come up at the top of search pages. The other info would still be available online, but would be much less obvious:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson

It's a really interesting article in general, I think!