My response to consultation about equality act

[Keyboardphone]

I've just googled myself (sad, I know, but that's for another thread!) and discovered my response to the consultation about the Equality Act, which was submitted in 2018 is there for anyone to view. I don't mind that, except my full name is on it - that I don't like. I've tried to get it removed, but it doesn't fall into any of the categories that would make Google remove it. I suppose I need to get the actual committe involved to remove it, but can't remember which one it was - that information doesn't come up. Can anyone enlighten me? And also, it might be worth everyone checking if their names are in the public domain along with their responses. It seems a real invasion of privacy to me, especially with the threats that have been made to women with GC views.

I’ve just checked and mine is there too. I guess if nobody much accesses them, they might gradually slide down the search engine lists. I probably stated at the time that I didn’t mind it being published. I rather imagined it being published as one of many in some huge list though, and it seems strange to me that it should be so easily searchable by my name as an individual document. My circumstances have changed significantly since I did it, so it’s potentially unhelpful, but I suspect there’s not much I can do about it.

I just googled myself to see what's there and nothing. I share my first initial and surname with a prolific author so it's all her. But good to know that these things aren't necessarily confidential.

Isn't there usually the ability to comment anonymously, or at least tick a box to say name must not be published? I had thought there was. Worrying if not.

At the time there was a lot of fear around using real names. You could have chosen to have your name not published but the safest way was to give an obviously anonymous or fake name.

I do all consultations and letters using my real name because I think it's important to calmly express our views in public.

I guess you could write to the women and equalities committee to ask them to remove it. Do you think you are at risk of being personally targeted because of your views?

Where can I find the responses? I did the consultation but can’t remember whether I anonymised it or gave a fake name. Nothing coming up on a basic google search but my name is very common!

Name with equality act consultation brought mine up.

@Woman2023 I'm not at any particular risk, as far as I know, but it's worrying that people's names can be found so easily. I do take your point about the need to state our views publicly. However, I didn't realise people's names would be so readily available, and so obviously attached to the submissions. I will contact the women and equalities committee to see if they are aware of this and if they can remove mine from google search.

I can see your point, google does make things instantly accessible in a way that is disconcerting.