Slashdot Mirror
Online Reputation Management To Keep Your Nose Clean?
Techdirt is reporting that as a response to all the hoopla about people being able to Google for information on potential employees (or lovers) a new market has opened up in "online reputation management". This seems to be the ultimate realization of those dubious firms who promised to scrub your records clean from a few years back. "From the description in the article, it sounds like this involves a combination of search engine optimization, plus legal bullying of anyone who says something you don't like. If anything, that sounds like a recipe for more trouble, but you can see how it would appeal to those who are unhappy with how they're perceived online. Obviously, it's no fun to have something bad about you exposed online, but efforts to suppress that information have a decent likelihood of backfiring and serving to highlight that information. I wonder if these online reputation managers have malpractice insurance for when that happens?"
I half expect this article to be posted by an 'Anonymous Coward'.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
if you don't pay these guys on time.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
I can imagine this: ...
...
Customer: Hi, I'd like a clean online reputation, can you do that?
Company: Sure, just a couple of clicks, 100 bucks and you're clean... What's your name?
Customer: Kevin Mitnick.
Company:
Company:
Company: -_-'
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
the "article" It's a fucking paragraph, and 5 of the 6 links it has are back to itself. What a crock
I find bizzare and almost Kafkaesque that Scuttlemonkey has quoted, and linked to, and article which begins 'From the description in the article...'.
Anyway, the real article is at
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080130/technology/lifestyle_us_internet_technology_rights
and says
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A new breed of image-manager is emerging in the United States to take on the masked and hooded cybermobs who, bolstered by anonymity and weak laws, launch damaging attacks on other web users.
"We are seeing online mobs emerge and launch attacks... with significant consequences, both to the people online and to their reputation offline," University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron told AFP.
The anonymity afforded by the Internet "gives people a kind of strength to be much harsher than they would be in person," Georgetown University sociology professor, and co-founder of International Reputation Management (IRM) Christine Schiwietz said.
Reputation managers step in where the law has failed, to provide "digital botox" to names in need of repair, as Schiwietz put it.
A group of women law students at prestigious Yale University who were attacked online, in what has come to be known as the Auto-Admit scandal, have taken on the services of reputation management group, Reputation Defender.
"Auto-Admit was ostensibly a site for getting advice about going to law school, but it degenerated into attacks on named women who were accused of having herpes, having abortions. They got rape threats, death threats," said Citron.
In a posting made last year, and which remains on the web and AFP was able to see, one of the students was called a whore and had lewd references made to her anatomy by numerous assailants who hid behind bogus pseudonyms such as Marty Lipton King Jr.
Anonymity and strength in numbers are fueling the online attacks.
"Five years ago, you had to create a website to get information on the Internet. That site could be traced to an IP address and there was some accountability," Nino Kader of IRM said.
"But Google owns blogs created on blogger.com. So there is a lack of accountability and that is one reason why people are getting pretty malicious out there," he said.
Citron likened vicious cyber-mobs to the mob mentality of the Ku Klux Klan.
"If you're in a crowd where people hold the same negative view as you, and you feel anonymous, you're going to do things you would never dream of doing if you had no mask and hood on," Citron said.
Reputation Defender is paying for a lawsuit filed by the women in the Auto-Admit case against their attackers, but up to now, victims of cyber-thuggery have had little redress in the courts.
"The law doesn't allow victims to sue the site operators because they aren't writing this stuff," said Citron.
"The difficulty in moving against the poster is that they often write under a pseudonym, are often not required to register with a site before posting, or use anonymizing technology. They are totally masked," she added.
Step in the reputation managers: they not only react to online maligning, as Reputation Defenders did in the Auto-Admit case, but also tout proactivity as the best tool to protect clients from online character assassination.
"It's more and more important to know what's out there about you," IRM's Kader said.
IRM concentrates on how clients appear in a Google search because "unless you are a hermit, you will be googled," Schiwietz said.
"There are around 10,000 Google searches made each second, and googling is expected to double or triple because you will be able to do a search anywhere with a handheld device," Kader said.
"I've been at meetings where people have googled the person opposite them," he added.
One method used by IRM to buff someone's Internet legacy is to get the good news about them as high up in Go
Am I really unusual in understanding that there are some things that one does not broadcast to the World? Am I alone is understanding that you don't post pictures of yourself drunk with transvestites on Facebook? Am I alone in understanding that you don't film youself in illegal acts and then stick it on YouTube?
Honestly, I don't care what someone does in their private life, but if they don't understand the line between private and public I probably don't want them working for me. Really people, is it that hard to use a pseudonym and a hotmail address?
Three Squirrels
I was an idiot 15 years ago:
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.protocols.nfs/browse_thread/thread/76662c9239a05257
Who can I talk to in order to erase the fact that I wanted to connect MSDOS and UNIX somehow.
Imagine! Wanting to connect two different operating systems together over Ethernet... how silly.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
At least, I couldn't find anything negative about them posted anywhere...
I was using the stalker site veromi.net the other day and came to a realization: now with search engines being ubiqutous, people with really common names seem to enjoy a better shield against employers googling information than those who have uncommon names. For example, there are probably a lot more "Tim Smiths" out there than there are "Mustafa Wenzel"s. Tim Smith is probably harder to find online, and if he did anything stupid as a teen(got caught shoplifting or whatever), the employer would have a much harder time finding it.
Then again, if you google my name, esp. my full name, without quotes, most of the results are porn..... I just happen to have the same last name as the stage name of a famous porn actress who frequently appears with a man whose stage first and last name is the same as my first and middle name respectively.
Monstar L
Stay the hell away from tequila.
What?
Because I've said it many times before here at slashdot, if you Google somebody and Google says they're a terrorist child molesting copyright infringer, you're setting yourself up for a slander/lible suit.
;)
Anyone who's ever managed a database of any size at all knows that a name is an incredibly bad identifier. Especially a name like scuttlemonkey or FuzzyDaddy. There were six people on the internet in 1997 with my name, one of whom is a semi-famous comedian who's been on Comedy central.
I'm not him. Im not the Canadian guy, either. This subject has been brought up at slashdot before, and I challenged people to identify me. Every time, some poor sod in Canada gets his home phone number and address posted at slashdot! And that after the Paxil Diaries, where my city was posted.
Of course, now with the whoremonger journals you would probably guess me, but I'm the exception. You're going to google for John Connor and find out that he's "terminator3000"? Not very damned likely.
You think you're going to find DelRoy Johnson in Chicago? Yeah you'll find him, all thousand of him.
Oh, and if by chance I get fired before I can retire and look for work, I'm a fine upstanding law abiding citizen who doesn't hire whores or smoke pot and my journals are all fiction
-anonymous coward
(ok not really, you know who I am)
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Can Jack Thompson really afford their services? I wonder how much it costs to fix a reputation that is currently sitting somewhere near negative infinity?
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
You can go to HR, and say "sure, Google me, but be warned, you will be violating company Internet usage rules if you look at the results." :-)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
We now have questionable social "networking" sites where your past dating partners can rate you. We have an eternal archive of everything anyone ever posted about you on the Internet.
"Oh I never use my real name on the Internet" goes only so far - these aren't things you are posting about yourself, these are things other people are saying about you. Can they be connected to you? Depends on how detailed the person commenting on you wants to be.
Are we ready for having our children 15 years from now ask why you were so mean to people before?
So of course we have companies offering the chance to wipe the slate clean. A fresh start. For only a few dollars. After all, what is money compared to this.
This could actually get out of hand if people paid any attention at all to the Internet. Fortunately, most people don't.
I've been trolling on slashdot and usenet for quite a few years, and, um, what do I do if potential employees discover, by searching, that yeah, I really am something of a pompous jerk? Is there somebody I can pay to make them think I'm nice... like, if I put a bunch of flowers and stuff on my home page, and say that I love you all and cry a lot, would that help? Or do I just have to suck it?
:-)
Moral of the story is, at some point, what you do on the internet is really yourself, or at least a piece of it, and there's going to be a phase where you have to reconcile who you want to be with who you really are. If you don't like what you write, then, maybe you need to change yourself, not what other people think of you.
I love you all, even you stupid liberals. Does that help?
This is my sig.
You have discovered Cygwin.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
2. Try not to be a Dick even when you disagree with someone.
3. Get your own presence on the web.
4. Use Google Alerts.
If you don't want someone to see it, don't post it, is it that hard?
I blame alcohol. Go ahead Google me. Have at it.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
In a way I feel fortunate that my name is identical to that of a famous person. I even live in the same city and state. As a result, anyone googling me has to wade through 10,000 hits for some other guy. I don't really need such a service.
Remember in Kindergarten when we were taught not to be a tattletale....sticks and stones, people, my God.
I made fun of some paranoid lady who thinks everyone is out to get her and now she lists me as a possible child molestor.
I love google.
Easy: I rarely do stuff with my real name on the Internet.
(Hint: my name isn't corsec67)
If I don't want someone to find out the name I go by for most of my online stuff, I just don't give them my username.
Doing a google search for my real name comes up with my thesis and a patent, both of which are me, and not a whole lot else.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
...the mafia!
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
For example, a young idealistic student might post a comment at a site like NoJailForPot.com, and later think twice about it when applying for work after college at, say, a government agency or perhaps an investment house...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You can pick your friends...
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I just read another article discussing the finer points of Internet life. How we've broken down our psyche into different 'avatars' and how FaceBook and other are bringing this home to roost. (I'm paraphrasing here, and I wish I could remember where the article came from...MSN maybe?)... Anyway, I digress... The problem I see with these types of sites is that they can accumulate all of this data, in the name of getting it offline for you, but where does it go? One of the steps (and here comes the attackable material) that a dictatorship needs is control of the people...If they have dirt on you, they can 'persuade' you to not say anything. All of these online personalities that people have gives them fodder. Once they have the ability to say (truthfully or not) that you are having an illicit affair, or you visit a 'dog sucking shoes' fetish site, they have the ability to control you. You can't get jobs, you don't qualify for loans, you don't do ANYTHING they don't allow. There are tons of historical references around, if you're willing to do the research. Of course the argument "If you don't do anything wrong, what are you worried about?" will be raised, and the answer is this: What's not wrong today may be against the law tomorrow. We as a people need to wake up and realize that our freedoms are being taken away, day by day, month by month. It's a scary thought, but I'd like to know that children today will have the same opportunities that I did, in this USA...
The problem isn't your myspace account -- you are smart enough to keep it clean. It's if your FRIENDS have a myspace account and post a picture of you, then tag it with your name. Or even if just your acquaintences.
Or if some Anonymous Coward just lies completely and claims that a photo is of you (when it really isn't) just to be a jerk. If they post it through TOR then they can never be found. And a site like Encyclopedia Dramatica would never take it down. ED will claim that they're immune from liability forever under CDA 230, and the anonymous poster will never be found. It's a wierd situation where a bad act can go completely unpunished, even if the webhost knows that there's a problem.
I figured out that I didn't want to use my real name online any more the first time some gay guy invited me into a "private" chat. No offense, but that's just not my thing. I've only used my real name for a few things since then, the rest anonymously or under pseudonyms (which I also keep disconnected from each other and myself).
Given that you can't get privacy back once you've lost it, I kinda figured it was obvious to preserve it. You can always surrender it later, if need be, but there's no undo button. Make an ass out of yourself online and, well, that's just tough.
http://www.johnwatie.com/
This started to change when people started putting personal servers on the 'net, and completely died when AOL (where you get to pick your own email name) joined Usenet in 1994. After that, your online name was pretty much anything you wanted it to be.
Looks like one of the subjects of the article has addressed the question on its blog: Reputation Defender Blog.
I'd be curious to see if AutoAdmit posts an official response.
I may not like George Bush or Neil Bush, but what is wrong with that picture?
I assume in your world you're constantly afraid of going to parties, or enjoying yourself because heaven forfend someone take a picture of that and post it out of context.
Here's something that might work: Ask, nicely.
,asking, not demanding, that I take the article down because it was the first thing that came up when someone searched on his name. It was ancient history and not something he was proud of.
Back in '99 I wrote an article about someone who threatened lawsuits against people who had posted his poem. Last summer I got an e-mail from him
I thought about it a bit, and, rather than remove the article, removed his name from it. It took about a month for Google to forget, but now when you search on his name the article is nowhere to be found.
If he had demanded that it be taken down, I would have laughed and ignored him. If he had threatened legal action, I would have blogged about it and brought it even more attention. But he asked. That made all the difference.
I have an almost unique fist and last name. Almost, there's one other guy with the same name. It turns out he's a children's television director. A few years ago I started getting calls from pre-teens who wanted to wanted to be actors. This got my attention (and kind of creeped me out) so I went to investigate.
It turned out that my portfolio web site got top Google page rank, his IMDB page #2. So kids, being kids, weren't smart enough to figure out that my web site wasn't the portfolio of a TV director and contacted me through it.
Searching through Google I didn't find anything incriminating or even embarrassing about either of us, but I have some friends who haven't learned about how the words Privacy and Internet interact yet, and I don't know anything about this alter-ego except he makes a living filming children.
So I thought I'd take some precautions.
I basically Google bombed myself. I set up pages on some of my spare domains that link back to my name and portfolio as well as linking to the various articles and other popular things I've done over the years. (I made sure I didn't link anywhere that was dynamic and uncontrollable like message boards or blog posts with comments.)
Now I have a very solid (and flattering) first page of Google. It would take my involvement in a major crime or tragedy to get any unwanted results on that first page.
I also do a line of contracting under a pseudonym. (When you do programming and photography, people seem to think you can't do either properly.) The pseudonym is pretty common name that I chose after Googling a few to see what gave the best results. Working under another name is as simple as filing a DBA or FBN with the county, and letting the bank know so you can cash your checks. Yes, it's public record, but they rarely show up on Google.
But I've tried to do everything that doesn't legally require my name under one pseudonym or other. I don't need those stupid rants I posted to usenet 20 years ago to come back to haunt me. Sure, everyone does it, but we like plausible dependability.
I wonder if this type of things could be used by Microsoft for Vista's reputation?
What's really scary about this isn't reputation, but the notion of having a set of legal tools for telling people they can't publish things you don't like. Reputation has been an issue for a long time, and people have informally learned to manage it. Enough of us have grown up with this that we can even teach our kids how not to make an idiot of themselves online before they're ready.
But what's escalating of late is this:
Most any truth can be converted into a value judgment. A statement that global warming is being caused by x could be turned into a slander suit against x. And from there we could get to no information available online about x. And that means the Internet cannot do a main thing many of us rely on it to do, which is to provide us with a way of doing oversight on the world.
Omniscient search engines right now are seen as good things because they can find information. That's good when you imagine that the truth is out there and should be found. But when the purpose of finding it becomes to suppress it, the next logical stage in the evolution of information warfare will be to make the truth harder to find so that it can't easily be expunged. To pass it along secret, trusted channels so that it's not available for target practice by the rich and powerful when they feel threatened. I'm not sure I'm looking forward to that.
Look at what happened with Political Correctness. It started out like such an obviously good thing--that people shouldn't say bad things, and the world would be better. But it hasn't played out thus.
You want a business idea? Create an organization that isn't based on removing controversial information but on creating new information that vets or refutes other information. The nice thing about that is you can create more than one such source, so you can have them duke it out in the marketplace. When you have a business based on suppression, you can't have a competing business based on non-suppression. The information is either out there or it's not. Truth is often hard to prove; to assume all information is removable unless its truth can be shown without a doubt is a pretty high bar to set. There are more roads to a society that lives in fear of censorship than just an overbearing government acting by fiat.
I'm not entirely negative on the idea of removing some "information" in cases where it's hurtful or protected by privacy rules. But not everything is of that kind. Free speech and privacy have a kind of yin/yang thing going, where a balance must be struck.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
From about 1996 onward I decided putting my picture, name, or address on the Internet was a reckless idea and stopped. ...but then there are those who post all their personal photos to facebook and so on, so I guess they'll learn the hard way and make an example for the rest of us - like the guy whose boss found a pic of him at a party in a fairy costume! haha...
Now I manage a handful of pseudonyms and assume the net as a whole is one place when I share personal data. I try not to offer enough pieces to positively identify me within about 500km.
In doing the search just now, I was very interested to find that another Michael Crawford has written extensively on mental illness. I'll have to drop him a line. He's the guy with the book at Amazon; all of my writing is online.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
"Friends of Privacy" - an organization introducing large number of false facts to the information network about something or someone to prevent obtaining real facts.
I can see this being a valid service. Some websites just won't remove your information, no matter how nicely you ask.
:-)
But I've found that time alone is a good solution. Like probably a lot of people here, I've been online for a long time and have said some embarrassing things on newsgroups and web forums when I was younger (and even now, when I'm just fooling around). I annoyed me that someone at work could google my first name + last name and come up with that stuff.
But for the last several years, I've been more careful to use multiple nicknames and to not reveal my real information very much. The result is that several other people have produced content online or had content produced about them who have my same first name and last name (the latter of which is a pretty unique)... which floods Google with results that are not about me. So now I don't care if prospective employers Google me. According to Google... I'm a youth pastor from Tennessee, a biologist from Illinois, and a rock band member... none of which I actually am.
Maybe Bernard Shifman can finally get a job...
Some people believe that they should be totally invisible, always using pseudonyms, but this can be against them: as eponymous blogs and webpages become more common, employers and potential business partners will start being extremely distrustful towards people who maintain no online presence under their real name.
To legally prevent an employer from using info from a social networking site, one might post terms of use that forbid such use. The idea is not legal advice, but it is something to think about.
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
I can't find anything related to what you say. It redirects to a page titled "greatest woman of all time" and it tells how great Barbra Streisand is.
As it something to do with the last editor named bstreisand? Who knows?