Tag Archives: privacy

Online reputation management, , , , , , , ,

International Investor’s new list of top earning hedge funds of the last year has put them top and center of the financial industry’s news cycle. Not that they are ever far from it. That is part of what makes their online reputation issues unique.

For hedge fund managers, maintaining inner-circle confidentiality is a priority. But their rock-star status within the financial community makes that hard to achieve.  With the media focusing on the private lives of top earners, it also hard to stay out of the public eye – and off the Internet. That is why privacy ranks high on my list of the top online reputation issues facing hedge funds.

But there are several online reputation issues facing hedge funds and their founders.  The most important include:

Privacy Threats

Inside leaks that impact their trades.  Take Greenlight Capital’s legal move to force investment site Seeking Alpha to reveal the identity of an anonymous contributor last February. (S/he leaked information on a large purchase by the firm—23 million shares of Micron Technology). Greenlight’s experience is not unusual, but its willingness to take legal action is. Most hedge funds steer clear of this type of public statement. (The firm dropped the suit after independently identifying the blogger.)

A high level of unwanted online visibility. News about hedge fund managers’ personal lives, complete with photographs they didn’t create, populate the web and in some cases can damage their professional brand. Their personal addresses—and even satellite pictures of their homes—can be  appear on a variety of websites. This information can originate from a source they considered safe (for instance, making a political donation that is subsequently published with a list of home addresses) but is then aggregated and republished.

Due to the lack of laws governing Internet content, this is legal, at least in the United States. According to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the main law regulating Internet content, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

Parody Blogs and Twitter Accounts

Common online issues facing hedge funds include third parties that take up their name space (a URL, or website address, resembling a person or company’s name). This can involve blogs and twitter accounts that appear to post information in their name but are actually platforms through which anonymous users can parody (or perhaps praise) the person or company. Many hedge funds choose to ignore such sites. But when the sites take up residence near the top of search results – the first and second pages after a Google search of the company or founder’s name – they don’t just consume online real estate, they can also impact a brand.

Reviews

The private nature of hedge funds limits their involvement with investor reviews and comments, factors that are much more important in the greater financial services industry. But these can now come from a new and unexpected source: Google’s Places for Business. If you own a hedge fund and suddenly see a box in the upper right corner opposite your company’s website with your business’s name, a description, map of its location and an invitation for anyone to post a review of it there, you are looking at a relatively new aspect of Google+ local.  This can serve as valuable marketing for businesses that rely on and benefit from reviews and walk-ins (such as restaurants, tailors and even some investment firms). But it is probably not an asset for hedge funds.

Keep an Eye on Your Brand Name…Lower Down on Google

Online reputation management firms maintain 24/7 monitoring of their clients online to keep track of new online content that appears about individuals and brands. But there is a quick way for hedge funds and their managers to glean insight into potential new privacy or reputation management issues: watch pages four through seven of the results in a Google search of your name and your organization’s name. New and unwanted content often first shows up on those lower pages before climbing higher. Depending on its source, relevance and quality, this content can take several weeks to rise—if it rises at all. That delay can provide an opportunity to develop an effective response.

Even hedge funds that have not had any reputation management issues would be well served to consider potential problems and develop a plan that addresses them.  In the era of social media, that should also include social media and BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) policies for employees so you both know your rights.

Excerpts from this article were published in selected Hearst Media Services Connecticut newspapers on 6.7.14.

 
 
Social Media, , , , , ,

Recent revelations about the NSA’s social media mining and analytic system have attracted much controversy. Many people don’t realize that a growing number of private companies use many of the same methods and have similar capabilities.

Such companies sell information to clients ranging from law enforcement and security companies to human resources departments and corporate intelligence firms. So it is critical to give some thought to strategies for managing your social media and other online activity. That is, if you are concerned with that activity (and your contacts) being collected, analyzed and possibly provided in reports to current or prospective employers, clients, partners and others.

Online investigative firms offer services ranging from basic social media screening, identification and verification to more extensive analysis and investigation, encompassing public records reports, deep Internet searches, social network mapping, activity monitoring, and resume vetting. On a broader scale, data from social media accounts and other online sources are also frequently scraped by automated bots, then aggregated and published by websites such as Intelius.com and USSearch.com.

Protecting your privacy

One way to protect your personal information is to stay off of social media entirely, or to limit your presence to a single trusted platform like LinkedIn. You can minimize the information that data mining companies obtain, while gaining greater control over what you do and don’t want to make available online.

Such a simple solution will work for some, but if abstaining from social media isn’t a viable option, a deliberate and cautious approach to managing your online image is necessary. Develop an appropriate strategy for managing your presence across all the platforms that you use.

Given the “new generation of programs that ‘revolutionize’ data collection and analysis” that are described by the New York Times, it’s also important to take a close look at what you may be revealing on social media in less obvious ways, such as through your network of connections, location metadata, and anything else that could be combined with public records and other available information to glean details about you. These pieces of data may seem obscure or inconsequential on their own, but with the advanced capabilities of the NSA and many private intelligence firms, you may be sharing more than you ever intended.

 
 
Online reputation management, , , , ,
The Many Uses of Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management (ORM) is commonly thought of as the way to remove negative commentary. But it is far more than that. This list provides many examples of how and why online reputation management is utilized. It also includes examples of some of the crises we have responded to with ORM:

– To create a strong online presence that acts as a protective barrier against third-party content, including anonymous and defamatory content.

– To remove home addresses, ages and related personal information from online databases, which often continuously scour the Internet to populate themselves.

– To replace old, unflattering photographs or caricatures and doctored images with new photographs. When the old images are cached or can’t be removed for some other reason, we minimize their prominence in searches.

– To ensure that factual, credible reference material is readily available online, minimizing the chance that fraudulent information will impact a brand.

– To provide insurance that your story is told by you and not by former partners or other biased parties.

– To rebrand Millennials when they enter the professional arena and Boomers when they reinvent themselves.

– To establish a reputation within a particular area of expertise on multiple online platforms.

– To create an online legacy for a VIP who is preparing for retirement or to exit a company or organization.

– To pair content with the most up-to-date SEO strategies to maximize its impact—keeping in mind that the quality of the content is the most important factor Google and most other major search engines now consider.

– To monitor social media and online forums for red flags signaling potential on- and off-line threats against high-profile individuals.

– To ensure up-to-date and accurate information dominates search results for an organization or individual’s name.

These are examples of some of the crises Reputation Communications has successfully mitigated using online reputation management:

– Emails and internal company documents were leaked and published online by inside sources.

– Online defamation campaigns—against both an organization and its key executives—organized by anonymous operators.

– Impersonation of prominent executives on social media and other online platforms.

– Long-resolved controversies were still commanding prominent placement in searches of an organization’s name.

 
 
Internet Legal Issues, , , , , , , ,
Tech Pioneer Sean Parker Weighs in on Internet Privacy

Parker’s history as a Silicon Valley pioneer makes his perspective on Internet privacy particularly notable. The Internet and social media have “helped foment revolutions, overturn governments, and give otherwise invisible people a voice,” he says, but they have also been “used to extend the impact of real-world bullying” and “form massive digital lynch mobs.” In such a climate, Parker asserts, “we are all at risk of becoming ‘public figures’ in a world where the media has expanded to include nearly everyone.”

New problems, new solutions

It’s clear that a truly sufficient solution will require our lawmakers to step up and take action. And Parker has some suggestions:

“In particular, we need to consider stronger privacy laws here in the U.S., a basic right to privacy along the lines of the laws enjoyed by the citizens of most Western European nations … In such a world, our defamation laws need to be updated to provide individuals with the protection from public persecution that they deserve. We also need to reinforce our personal privacy by beefing up the intellectual property laws that govern the personal content that we generate and share via services like Facebook.”

 Legal frameworks for dealing with digital media are outdated

“It’s increasingly clear that our legal frameworks for dealing with these new mediums are outmoded at best,” Parker says. Recent revelations about the NSA’s surveillance and data collection programs have underscored the inadequacy of current laws. The gap continues to grow. “Every looming technological breakthrough, from Google Glass to driverless cars promises to make our every move and download a little easier to track,” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote last month. This trend applies not only to government surveillance, but also the kind of every-citizen and “blogging for dollars” journalism that Parker is troubled by.

Significant legislative changes needed

While it may seem futile to try to keep our privacy from being swept away by such powerful currents, The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf argues that there is hope. “Americans facing even longer odds have succeeded before in bringing about social or legal change, and even in amending our founding document,” he writes. “At some point in time everyone, whether they engage actively with these new mediums or not, will experience a violation of their privacy, will find their reputation besmirched publicly, and may even find their sanity challenged,” Parker predicts in his TechCrunch post. He will likely be right—unless we find the will to enact significant legislative changes.

 
 
Crisis Management, , , , ,
The Naked Truth on Prince Harry

It looks like Prince Harry has gotten himself into trouble again. But this is far from a crisis.

Prince Harry is the wit in a sea of English Breakfast tea, the tingling gin and tonic at lunchtime on a humid day.  He has never tried to project an image of being anything but what he is: a rogue. The pictures capture the Prince Harry we know. More of him than we ever expected to see, but nothing, we expect, that will ruin his reputation. (Though it might reduce the number of his official duties….indefinitely.)

Reputation management is ultimately about being authentic.  Prince Harry’s Las Vegas vacation may not be representative of Royal tradition, but he has never been traditional. Even Royals are human; Harry, especially so.