In the dust-up regarding leaked Democratic National Committee emails, we are surprised DNC members were not using encrypted emails. Especially for their their personal accounts. Everyone in their position needs email privacy. They should consider apps like Wickr, which allows users to send messages to each other that are “secured with military-grade encryption” and that are destroyed after a user-set time period. Unlike some other secure messaging services, Wickr also ensures that your messages can’t even be read by Wickr itself.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has given Wickr high marks for data protection. PC Mag calls it “best secure messenger on Android.” (Though it “has a little ways to go before it becomes the best messenger app overall.” PC Mag gives that title to voice and messaging app Viber.)
Wickr’s co-founder and CEO Nico Sell runs a white-hat hacking camp at the Def Con conference in Las Vegas every year. The camp is designed for “children and teenagers,” but we hear that doesn’t stop a lot of adults from participating. It starts next week.
Popularity does not necessarily follow power. But it isn’t its prominent role in shaping international affairs that earned the United States its middling score in the 2016 Reputation Institute study of the most reputable countries in the world. Ranked at 28th, the U.S. not only lags far behind leaders like Canada and Australia, but also trails some developing countries. Most countries with our ranking are under a dictatorship or in a state of instability. A significant factor in weighing down the U.S.’s reputation is the partisanship that has increasingly dominated its politics.
The link between partisanship and negative perceptions of the U.S. is nothing new. As partisan division grew steadily over the last two decades, almost doubling under George W. Bush and President Obama, the nation’s global standing dropped significantly. Obama’s 2008 win actually gave a boost to the United States’ international reputation, but that gain has been eroded as divisive politics has thrust the 2016 Presidential race into the world’s watchful eye.
A Call for Change
The value of individual voices in changing perceptions should not be discounted. Bill Clinton’s speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention seemed to resonate with a broad desire for political harmony, attracting praise even from Mitt Romney. The “politics of constant conflict” may be effective, Clinton said, but “good politics does not necessarily work in the real world.” If November 2016’s victor can translate Clinton’s words into real-world cooperation and compromise, he or she might be able to break through the gridlock and set the United States on course for a revitalized international reputation.
U.S. authorities fighting human trafficking have identified the Communications Decency Act as an obstacle to stopping the crime. Anti-trafficking groups agree. Free speech proponents beg to differ, though. So does Silicon Valley.
As the Journal article points out, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.com are among the tech companies that benefit from the Communications Decency Act.
We have written extensively about how the Communications Decency Act impacts online reputation management. If that is a topic of interest to you, then you will find Mr. McKinnon’s article illuminating.
“Employment Matters” columnist Mindy Stern recently interviewed Reputation Communications’ CEO Shannon Wilkinson about online reputation management. These are highlights of the column:
Why is reputation management important for small business owners? Reputation management is important because most purchasing decisions by consumers are now made after conducting online research. You can’t control what people say about you on the Internet, but you can counterbalance it with compelling, factual information and visuals to tell your story and engage potential clients, customers and journalists. That is what reputation management does.
How is reputation management relevant for job seekers? Reputation management gives you the opportunity to present your best self on the Internet. That is where it is being assessed by potential employers.
What do you consider the most important thing for our readers to know about protecting their online reputation? The average Google page has 10 entries. The more of those you “own,” the more of a protective digital firewall you will create around your online reputation.
Baylor is the oldest continually operating university in Texas. Chartered in 1845, the private Christian University is a nationally ranked research institution. Now it is embroiled in a crisis: sexual-assault victims, administrators accused of being indifferent to the issue and athletes who reportedly conducted the assaults. Kenneth Starr, a former U.S. Solicitor General, has resigned as chancellor at Baylor as “a matter of conscience.”
Benjamin Wermund, higher education reporter for the Houston Chronicle, has been covering this story since it broke. He interviewed several communications experts about Baylor’s handling of the crisis. Reputation Communications’ CEO Shannon Wilkinson recommended more transparency, including participating in the discussion on social media:
The school could do more to go on the offensive online, where the news about the scandal initially broke and where most people are forming — and sharing — their opinions of the situation. It could push its message out more on social media, including via Twitter, where the school has said little about the situation to its more than 68,000 followers. They aren’t addressing the crisis on Twitter, and they need to. They need to have a system to participate in the discussion, otherwise they completely lose control over public perception of how they are managing this.”
An Epic Crisis Facing Higher Education
We have written extensively about the sexual assault crisis at U.S. universities. Here are our most relevant posts, including a recent one about a different type of scandal at UC Davis.
Institutions throughout the U.S. have failed to provide the information and resources that students need to protect themselves from becoming victims of sexual assault on campus…and to appropriately address the crisis when they are. If you would like to learn more about the issue, we recommend viewing The Hunting Ground, a documentary film about institutional cover-ups of campus sexual assaults. CNN premiered it last year.
In this week’s Reputation Reboot, we address why it takes so long for the first item on a Google search to be displaced. It explains why ORM is usually not a quick fix.
In this week’s Reputation Reboot, an industry leader asks how to get rid of a defamatory blog post that appears at the top of his Google search results. Although he used an online reputation management firm for several months, the item has not budged.
In this Reputation Reboot column we discuss the role social media plays in online reputation management, and explore options for those that don’t have—or don’t want—an active presence on social media.
