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What are my options?

Reputation Defender for a start.

Am I overreacting?

Not just no, but "F$CK NO!" Do NOT listen to the idiots who are telling you, "Anyone who'd believe this isn't worth working for." Screw that. The people you DO want to work for ARE reading Google, MySpace, Facebook and everything else.

You're getting into the "Green" industry, and they're highly connected to the internet, and set to become even more connected. Add to the fact that some of the best employers might require you to go through an SSBI to get a security clearance (DOE), and this could really mess you up.

Should I attempt to set up my own site that would steal the top Google search from this blog posting?

YES! Yes, you want to do everything you can to make sure YOUR name appears at the top of Google. But you can't cheat, and you need to be aware of the "Streisand Effect". If you complain/bitch/fight too loudly, you'll get the reverse effect, and everyone will be flocking to the bad guy's site. That will drive Google's ranking up ahead of yours.

The folks saying "Anyone who'd do this isn't worth working for" don't know what they're talking about.

It's true that opt-out and opt-in lead to very different solutions. But opt-out gets expensive when a lot of people do it; the companies have to actually go through and process each opt-out request.

Plenty enough of people are opting out through services allowing individuals to see what information the big data brokers have on them, and to delete some of it, but not all data can be removed that way. They call it a "global do not call list". keeping with the FTC's US phone do not call registry. If enough people opt out, the customer service costs become so high that it becomes cheaper for trackers to force opt-in instead.

To the predictable "They are proposing a [x] market based solution" -- yeah, it's true. But they at least have a shot at controlling some of it for the people who care the most.

Unless you feel like giving your money away in $30 chunks to those reputation management companies that have sprung up. I'm sure they'd be quite happy to take $30 a pop to get rid of your kegstands, bong hits, 4:20 celebrations, cross-dressing....

Oh, crud, that was just last weekend's worth.

The ReputationDefender user agreement looks dangerous.

They become your legal agent. But not your attorney. "You authorize us to be your privacy advocates. In this role, we might contact third parties, including creators of unwelcome content, hosts of unwelcome content, and other parties who might have control or authority over such content. You authorize us to take such action on your behalf, and to identify ourselves as acting on your behalf. You recognize that such contact may have unpredictable side-effects, including but not limited to negative responses from others. We are not your lawyer and cannot dispense legal advice, nor does this Agreement or the Services create any attorney-client relationship or legal representation."

Then they try to escape any liability: "You agree that you will hold harmless ReputationDefender, Inc., and its officers, directors, and employees, from all claims arising out of or related to your access or use of, or your inability to access or use, ReputationDefender's services, this Web site, or the information contained in this Web site or other web sites to which it is linked."

As your authorized agent, if they do something they shouldn't, you are liable. That's what "agent" means, legally. ReputationDefender doesn't take responsibility for its own actions. That's a dangerous position to be in contractually.

Usually the people you might let be your agent, in the legal sense, are regulated in some way. Realtors, stockbrokers, accountants, private detectives, employment agents, and lawyers may act as your agent. But those are all regulated businesses, for good reasons. Such people take on liability and usually carry insurance coverage. There are established guidelines for what people in those fields can and can't do. That's not the case here. ReputationDefender, which is unregulated, wants you to take the responsibility for their actions, while being rather vague about what those actions might be. This is an open-ended risk.

It would be a very good idea to consult a lawyer before signing up with ReputationDefender.

See the FAQ. ReputationDefender doesn't serve corporate clients. Also see my other reply - I realize the marketing copy in question may not be to your liking, but realize that it's not really targeted at a technologically sophisticated audience with lots of time on their hands and the saavy to deal with these sort of issues themselves.

ReputationDefender does a lot more than just emailing website maintainers. Obviously, there are additional service fees for higher levels of service, as the article in question alludes to, ranging from SEO services, to arranging for legal counsel in certain cases (when appropriate).

The specific range of possible services is highly dependent on the type of content in question, where it is hosted, who has posted it, etc., and there's a detailed series of procedures that the company has developed for a pretty wide variety of scenarios. We have a great combination of cool technology for personalized search result aggregation and filtering, with a dedicated team of customer service professionals and a body of institutional knowledge on dealing with a wide variety of online reputational issues.

Obviously, in some cases, you can do all of this yourself, write your own friendly and potentially more insistent letters, notify the appropriate authorities, administrators, or other relevant parties, do your own personal SEO, find your own legal representation if necessary, and so on and so forth, to deal with the range of issues that can come up in this area. But many people find value in having a service offering like ReputationDefender that will coordinate all of this, and make all these offerings available in one place.

As a member of the company's advisory board and a long-time Slashdotter, I can assure you that ReputationDefender does not engage in any illegal activities, pretexting, cracking, etc. in the process of getting information removed from the web. I recognize that some of the marketing copy on the site is less than crystal clear, but in a busy startup, getting the website copy rewritten isn't always the top priority.

In any case, services range from sending polite requests on customers behalf (automated and manual depending on context), search engine optimization techniques, arranging for legal intervention in certain cases, and more. You can find much of this information on our Frequently Asked Questions page. Many of our customers have found our techniques effective and feel like we've provided them with excellent value for their money.

Nobody can make bad content posted repeatedly by a determined adversary disappear entirely, obviously, and we would be foolish to claim that we could do the impossible.

I should also mention that we hold ourselves to a very high ethical standard regarding the types of intervention we perform and the types of clients we will take on, and we are very sensitive to First Amendment issues and not trying to interfere with the dissemination of genuinely newsworthy content. However, there are a lot of people out there who've faced crazy stalkers and people trying to unfairly bash them, or just chunks of stale information out there that they really didn't want to be public, and having a service offering to track down that information, figure out who's responsible for it, and attempt to get it removed, or in some cases reduce its impact, is quite valuable to many people.