A Swindon man previously convicted of having indecent images “accidentally” deleted his browser history.

Steven Howse, of Ridge Green in Shaw, claims a setting on newly-installed computer software got rid of a month’s worth of internet sites without him realising - but he had a back-up of the data on another device that was not checked by police.

The 52-year-old indicated a plea of guilty to one charge of breaching a sexual harm prevention order between April 13, 2022 and July 14, 2022.

The order had been made in December 2016 following Howse’s previous convictions for making indecent images of children and possessing extreme pornography.

At that time, he was jailed for one year after police found images and videos, many of which involved the abuse of girls aged between 12 and 14 years old and fell within the most serious category of offending, on devices at his home address.

In the years since then, Howse has been banned from having a device capable of using the internet unless it keeps a history of the sites he visits at all times, and he must make the hardware available for inspection when requested.

Keith Ballinger, prosecuting, told Swindon Magistrates' Court on Tuesday that during a routine unannounced inspection carried out by police in July 2023, the officer checked the defendant’s PC and found a program which had been installed in June that was set to delete Internet history, so a month of data was missing.

The device was then seized.

Luke Jameson, defending, said: “He did not intend to delete the history, it was an accident.

“He’s aware of the prohibitions. The setting is the problem, not the software installation itself.

“He installed this software after building a new PC from scratch. He has used the program for many years because he likes that it automates certain things like freeing up memory.

“It was his own stupidity for not changing the setting so that it did not clear his internet history.

“He still has a copy of that internet history linked to another device, his mobile phone, which he offered to show the officer, but he was not interested.”

“[Howse] has shown me and there is no evidence of anything improper.”

Magistrates accepted this explanation and ordered Howse to pay a £150 fine and £85 in court costs as well as £60 to fund victim services.