We receive many, many enquiries a week from people looking to trace individuals for a multitude of reasons and we have an incredibly high standard as to whether we take the case on or not.
This week, especially in light of the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) on 25th May 2018, we wanted to take a closer look at the grounds to which we will and will not complete people tracing.
All of our tracing services – whether electronic, agent-led or more substantive – are completed in full compliance of the law and the trace is carried out with either legal grounds to do so or the traced person’s eventual consent to share their information/location. Because this is the immoveable standard one way or the other for all our trace jobs, this can be very frustrating to people making enquiries who neither have the lawful justification or know they will never receive the person’s consent.
With this week’s blog we’re going to take the last few enquiries we’ve received and breakdown whether we took the case and what our rationale was for making that decision:
A solicitor contacts us representing a client who repossesses people’s homes and sells them off to recover the monies owed. In this instance the client has sold the property for more than what the debts amount to so the surplus money needs to be returned to the original home-owner. The solicitor is having trouble tracing said home-owner and wants our assistance.
Did we take the case and carry out a trace? Yes.
What was our reason for doing this? There was lawful grounds to do so in that our client, in this case the solicitor, was trying to trace and communicate with someone for legitimate legal reasons.
A man contacts us and says he is looking for his daughter’s ex-boyfriend. Before they broke up, the man leant the ex-boyfriend £1500 for a car, he has not repaid it and has disappeared completely without giving further contact details. There is no documented loan agreement in place between the parties and other than a vague text message from a year ago between the two, there is no proof that a loan occurred.
Did we take the case and carry out a trace? No.
What was our reason for doing this? There was no means through due diligence to definitively ascertain that the man was looking for this ex-boyfriend of his daughter’s for the reason he said. There was no provable lawful purpose in place because there was no existence of an agreement. We could not inarguably prove that the man was looking for the subject for the reasons he said and would not harm him in some capacity when we found him.
An elderly woman contacts us asking us to trace her estranged brother. They have not spoken since 1977 when she married a man her brother disapproved of. She has lost touch with him completely but is now dying from a terminal illness and wishes to get in touch with him to make amends before she dies.
Did we take the case and carry out a trace? Yes.
What was our reason for doing this? We took the case with the pre-agreed caveat with our client that consent would be required from the subject we were tracing on her behalf before we could share any information with her. The client gave us a letter she had written to her brother should we be successful in order to assist in bringing about a reconciliation which it did and the two were successfully reunited once we located the brother, explained the situation and asked his permission to provide details for her to contact him on.
All of our searches are carried out in full compliance of all laws, ICO regulations and GDPR requirements. We deliver fast, accurate and successful results for the objectives our clients need completed. As can be seen above though, there always needs to be a lawful basis and/or subject consent.
