Tag Archives: defamatory online content

Online reputation management, , , , ,
Right to be Forgotten on Google

At Reputation Communications, we like to focus on all of the good the Internet can do for your reputation capital. Of course, in order to reap all of the Internet’s benefits, being aware of the side of the Internet that poses risks is Important.

  • Websites can be created in your name that are intended to denigrate or attract inappropriate attention to you or your organization, ranging from responses to your political views to public protests of your company’s activities and direction.
  • Anonymous and biased negative commentary about you can be published on public Internet forums.
  • An attacker can organize campaigns on Twitter and other social media platforms that attack your credibility and views in dozens of daily tweets and posts.
  • Malicious content, from caricatures and doctored photographs of you or your organization’s logo or website, to photographs of your home and listings of your home address, can be posted online.
  • Attackers can mount social media campaigns that hurl abuse or other negative messages that can damage your brand, destroy shareholder value and cause company executives to step down.

Though these risks seem daunting, you are not powerless. Employing an online reputation management firm (ORM) makes sure your story is factually correct and positive, and makes sure that it appears in all the right places on the Internet. It can be told using text, video, audio, images, blog posts, Facebook, a website, and many other platforms.

ORM is also utilized when:

  • Your company is attacked in a proxy battle, and defamatory statements are hurled at you online—where they stick.
  • Your opponents use online tactics aimed at destroying your influence.
  • Foreign nationals threaten to extort you and publish fake news to smear your reputation.
  • You are sued for divorce, sexual harassment or other reasons, and legal notices fill the first page of your Google results.
  • You dismiss an employee or end a personal relationship and the person retaliates, whether through writing an anonymous blog they created specifically to demean you, or publishing confidential information and documents that threaten the shareholder value of your company.
  • Your address and satellite pictures of your home are readily found online.

Also remember that while keeping a low profile on the Internet may be less work than building and maintaining your online reputation, not protecting yourself leaves you vulnerable and defenseless to malicious online attacks.

Our founder and CEO, Shannon Wilkinson, recently wrote an article for Risk Assistance Network + Exchange (RANE) that highlights these reputation risks and how online reputation management can be used to avoid them. You can find it here.

 
 
Google, Internet Legal Issues, , , , , , ,
Internet law information

We are all increasingly hearing about hot button issues such as fake news controversies, the “digital divide” and the range of narratives influencing public opinion on the internet.

In the United States, those issues are affected by the laws governing free speech and Internet content. At Reputation Communications, we are committed to educating the greater public about the laws, opportunities and nuances inherent in Internet perception-shaping and publishing.

Here at You(Online), we publish the most extensive resources specific to those topics.

Recent highlights include the following articles, which examine the “Right to be Forgotten,” Internet laws and one way President Trump protected his brand–something every public figure and many CEOs should do.

Dan Shefet: Creator of the Internet’s Ombudsman He made worldwide headlines in 2014 when he forced Google to remove links to defamatory information about him. He has since established the Association for Accountability and Internet Democracy (AAID).

An Attorney’s Advice for Removing Negative, Defamatory and Infringing Material from the Internet  Steps to take when you are a twibel target, to sue or not to sue, and “SLAPP,” a meritless lawsuit filed against a defendant in retaliation for speaking out against a public issue or figure.

President Trump’s Astute Online Reputation Management Playbook  Trump’s moves include purchasing 3,643 website domain names with variations of the word “Trump.”

As a trusted source of information on these topics, our blog has attracted a worldwide readership and been cited in leading media platforms. Please share our content with your friends and colleagues who care about these issues…and follow us on Twitter @reputationnews.com.

 
 
Online reputation management, , , , , , ,

“Content” is text, video, photographs, podcasts and any other form of information placed online.

It is the biggest influence on a webpage’s rank. Your webpage’s rank determines where it shows up in Internet searches of your and your organization’s name.

Ranking also determines the prominence of third-party content about you, which is a large part of the reason it is important to understand where that content is coming from. Understanding those sources will play a key role in deciding how to manage that content—which is the heart of online reputation management.

Generally, the sites with the most daily visitors and views have the highest rankings, and the most prominent content. Top 10 websites include Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as major media sites. But there are other factors that influence where a webpage shows up. Even obscure sources can show up in the first page of searches.

Strategically crafted headlines

People often see an article about them – or their brands — from a little-trafficked blog (or some other relatively obscure source) on the first page of a Google search. This can often be the result of the way the headline is written, making the article seem especially relevant to the search terms. The longer the article stays near the top of search results, the harder it is to dislodge.

Tags

If you notice pictures of you showing up prominently on Google, it is because someone has tagged them. A tag is a caption that is added to the metadata of a photograph or to an article, blog post or other piece of text that is published online.

Internet data scraping

Data scraping is how your home address, age, family members’ names and age and satellite pictures of your home end up online. Programs (called ’bots) continually scrape the web for data from publicly available sources like county courthouses, telephone directories and other sites. It is then collected by public databases that package, publish and sell that information.  If you find a lot of references to your address online, that is how it got there.

Aggregated content

Aggregated content means content that is republished from another source. The Internet is full of sites that republish content, especially content that will attract a lot of viewers, which includes celebrity- and VIP-related content. When you see versions of your photographs or other content about you on multiple minor sites (including sites that look junky or low-quality), they have aggregated that content.

Anonymous commentary

It is difficult to have anonymous comments about you removed from an online forum or other platform—but it can be done, especially if the material is clearly defamatory. Increasingly, websites are revising their comment and user policies to prevent libel. (The more obscure and independent a site, the less likely it is that they have such practices in place. See our safe browsing tips below.) If you are the topic of such content, look for their user policy. Often they will not only remove the offensive material when requested to do so, but they will block the user who posted it from their site.

Ultimately, you want to control as much of the online content about you and your organization as possible. The more high profile you are, the harder that is. But with strategic online reputation management, it is not impossible. Content drives Google results. It is now the most influential aspect of restructuring them. We are highly experienced in advising clients on what type of content to employ to reboot their Google results. We are experts in creating it, too. To learn more, please visit our Services page.