Advice Needed on getting Personal Data Removed from 3rd Party Website

sarahj1990

I would appreciate some advice on getting Personal Data Removed from a 3rd Party Website. My Auntie used to run a small company, it was closed 14 years ago due to her retiring. A website decided to advertise her business without her permission. Her address and date of birth are advertised on this website. We have contacted the website directly to get the data removed but they just ignore our requests. We then found out the hosting company via whois.com and the website is hosted by Amazon. Next step was to contact Amazon directly who sent an email to the website requesting for the data to be removed. The website also ignored Amazon requests. We then sent another email to Amazon to notify them that the website have ignored their request. Amazon replied by saying - we understand your concern regarding the continued availability of the content you have reported. As noted previously, AWS customers are responsible for their activity on AWS. As a courtesy we notified our customer of your request to have the content removed or access disabled, however at this time we are not able to take action. We strongly encourage you to continue to work with our customer directly to address the concerns that you may have. This response is a joke, we have already notified Amazon that the 3rd party website have ignored all our request to remove the data. Can anyone suggest the next best move.

 

MattMattMattUK

If you want Amazon as the hosting company to remove it you will need a court injunction so not worth the hassle. 

You can send a GDPR request to the website as well as report them to the ICO, however if the information is public domain as company director information is then that will not be covered in the same way (Eg. If it is also listed on Companies House).

sarahj1990

From the research I have done I know that the information about Directors held by Company House is not covered by the data protection. The problem is my Auntie's company was closed 14 years ago so none of the information about her company is available on the Companies House website. The only information on the internet is from this 3rd party website. If they would remove her address and date of birth it wouldn't be so bad. There were a few other similar websites that held the same data about my Auntie's company. When we contacted their hosting company after they ignored our requests to remove the the data, it was quickly removed.