ReputationDefender Launches NameGrab

Many of my readers know I am probably one of ReputationDefender’s largest fans. If you have read my recent book, Google Bomb, you will completely understand why.

Back in 2003 I was attacked viciously online. Slime balls of lies, twisted truths and much more. In 2006 I won a landmark case with a jury verdict for damages of over $11M! The jury sent a very clear and strong message – free speech does not condone defamation. Be careful what you post online, it may not only haunt you later, it could cost you a bundle.

After my court room victory, I felt vindicated and like a new person. However what I didn’t realize is that all that ugly stuff online still existed.

My next call-out was to Michael Fertik, CEO and Founder of what was, back in 2006, a small new company. He assured me he could help me with my virtual image. As promised, within a few months, I was back to myself both emotionally and virtually.

Since then, I have recommended these services to many people. I receive hundreds of emails of people that are being harmed online. ReputationDefender has grown from the few people I remember, to an entire staff of caring and dedicated people that are there to help you manage your online reputation.

For the record: I am not a spokesperson or sponsor of ReputationDefender. I do not participate in their referral affiliate program and I have never received any gifts or money from them. I am simply a very satisfied client.

Today they announced their latest service, NameGrab. Here is their recent press release. I am confident this is another fantastic asset to their growing and successful business. Read on!

ReputationDefender Launches Online Identity Management Service

NameGrab Allows Users to Control and Protect Their Names Across the Web, Dominate Search Results and Promote Their Personal Brands Online

REDWOOD CITY, CA–(Marketwire – November 16, 2009) – ReputationDefender, the leading comprehensive online reputation and privacy management company, today introduced NameGrab, a new service that allows users to control their online identities and promote their personal brands online. NameGrab’s proprietary technology automates the process of reserving your name across hundreds of social networking sites, thus ensuring both that search results produce the ‘real you’ and that your personal brand is accurately reflected online.In today’s search-dominated world, your high-quality online identity has never been more crucial. NameGrab provides the tools to help you proactively secure that identity by claiming the most important social profiles on the Web on your behalf. Using NameGrab’s innovative technology, you can now:

– Control and protect your name across the Web;
– Own your name on hundreds of social networking sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter;
– Prevent imposters from posing as you online;
– Dominate search results for your name; and
– Ensure that people find the real you.

“It’s impossible to overstate the importance of protecting your good name on the Internet. By gaining control over your brand and image across social networking sites, you can ensure that friends, colleagues and potential customers using these powerful online properties can easily find the real you and not someone else,” said Michael Fertik, CEO and founder of ReputationDefender.

“NameGrab is ideal for anyone with a presence online — new college graduates, job hunters, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers and realtors who use the Web for new client leads. NameGrab is the only service that makes reserving and managing your name across social networking sites truly effortless — ultimately putting control of your name back in your own hands, where it belongs.”

NameGrab is also available for businesses looking to improve customer connectivity and efficiently manage their online footprints. NameGrab provides access to all registered usernames and passwords within one convenient, secure location, limiting excess email, and allowing users to easily manage which profiles need content and be alerted to the latest social networks and new profile availability. For more information on NameGrab, please visit: http://www.namegrab.com/

About ReputationDefender

ReputationDefender is the world’s only comprehensive online reputation and privacy management company. Through its suite of services, including MyReputation(SM), MyEdge(SM), MyChild(SM), and MyPrivacy(SM), ReputationDefender helps its customers manage and protect their online information. ReputationDefender also helps customers promote themselves and their businesses online. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, ReputationDefender serves customers in over 40 countries and has been featured in Washington Post and Forbes cover stories, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Follow ReputationDefender on Twitter @RepDef

Visit ReputationDefenderBlog and get involved with the conversation and chat!

Sue Scheff: ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik Talks “Google Insurance”

Source: ReputationDefenderBlog

It’s no secret that people use Google to learn about potential dates or possible job applicants. In fact, it’s practically expected in the digital age. Despite this seeming awareness of how Google search can affect one’s life, however, few people invest in what ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik calls “Google Insurance.”

Just as you have home or car insurance to prevent damage to your belongings, you should also have Google insurance to prevent damage to your personal brand online. In a recent post at the blog Plus&Play.com, Michael Fertik explained some simple ways to protect your personal brand from misinformation on Google.

Register the URLs for your name and variants, and consider creating a blog. The objective here is to own the first 1-5 results that appear on search engines if someone searches your name. I don’t think most people should be bloggers, but having a Google-friendly and SEO-rich blog platform like Wordpress or TypePad that is updated even twice per month as an online journal is worth the investment for having first say in your image.

For additional advice on personal branding in the digital age, make sure to check out the rest of the blog post, which can be found here.

Thanks to the Plus&Play blog for helping spread the word about the importance of pro-active Online Reputation Management.

Sue Scheff: Are you jeopardizing your job with social media?

Source: Baltimore Internet Examiner
By: Chip Dizard

Go to Chip's Home Page

You have heard the horror stories, last year, a North Carolina school district disciplined several faculty members for Facebook content such as personal photos and comments about students. Wired.com reported that an Associated Press staffer in Philadelphia was reprimanded for a Facebook posting that criticized his company.

According to Sharlyn Lauby, president of ITM Group, a human resources consulting firm says "If I can put up pictures of the kids, I can put up pictures from a meeting,". "If I can talk about a recipe I saw with my sister, I can put up an article about something I saw that's work-related. ... People are talking about you, whether you want them to or not. As a company, you need to think about how you want to be positioned."

Companies are now dealing with this dilemma because work and personal lives often collide. Many companies have resorted to blocking social networking sites due to lost productivity and network concerns.

The key for employees to know is that whatever you post online can be used against you. Employers are often checking your online profile as a condition of employment. I had a client recently come to me about a web site link , she consented to do an interview on a major cable network, but it was for a surgery she wanted to keep private. So when you googled her name her employees found out that she had cosmetic surgery. This was something she agreed to with the cable network and it couldn't be taken down. For those people who want to protect their reputation, there are a few companies that will do that for a fee. One that is very popular is Reputation Defender.

Whatever you do, just be wise and trust your gut, if it seems inappropriate it probably is, I always err on the side of caution, especially in the workplace.

The New Facebook Family: Reevaluating Social Media

Source: ReputationDefender Blog

By Adam Tanguay

Over the last few months I have observed an interesting change in the world of Facebook. Where I used to see friends socializing, I now see mothers producing safety-themed wall posts on my friends’ pages. Where I used to see old classmates partying it up, I now see pictures of younger siblings conducting acts better left undocumented. Call it the new Facebook Family.
The evidence of the new Facebook Family is everywhere.

Directly below [above] my friend’s recent post decrying a party-induced headache is his mother’s serene avatar, reminding him politely about the dangers of drinking. Distant cousins who I might not see for years at a time now receive glimpses into my daily life and inquire about personal family matters on a regular basis. It is obvious that there is a new family present in the once esoteric world of social media, and this burgeoning group has drastically altered the core dynamics of our digital space.

As a brash teen with a passion for creative media outlets, I relished my early social media experiences with MySpace, LiveJournal, and Friendster. These digital spaces were exciting because I felt like I belonged to an innovative new web faction separate from popular culture. My grandma didn’t have a MySpace profile and Wal-Mart wasn’t going to post comments on my LiveJournal posts.

But all that has changed. The geeks, hackers, and techies are now shoulder to shoulder with moms and business executives in freshly commercialized social media channels. I even heard Tom Hanks talking about Twitter last night on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. It appears that, as the social media family continues to expand into new domains and infiltrate the general public’s collective conscious, the subculture that spawned it all is destined to quietly slip away into a new corner of the Web.

I believe social media’s move into the mainstream is positive. The amazing benefits of this space are now accessible to everyone. Average Internet users now wield the tools to control their online reputation and identity, empowering average people to explore a world that was once extremely difficult for outsiders to understand.

However, this drastic accessibility shift has also changed the nature of social media. Savvy advertisers and recruiters were successful in early Web 2.0 channels because everything was still relatively “underground” in the eyes of users. Now that your mom Tweets all day long, the edginess early social media marketers once enjoyed has been severely incapacitated.

It is hard to say whether the new Facebook Family has inhibited social media from influencing interactions. However, if our favorite social media sites weaken with an influx of ads, fake-users, and a general loss of DIY spirit, it could signal the death of the industry. I like to remain optimistic. I believe a strong base of users reflecting their true online identities and a spirit of positive interaction will help maintain the integrity of the new family in which we find ourselves.

What do you think? How have you adapted to the new Facebook Family?

ReputationDefender: Bing vs Google vs Yahoo People Search

Source: ReputationDefender

Last week, we wrote about Bing, Microsoft’s latest foray into the search engine market. At that time, the search engine was only open to private users. Today, however, Bing was released to the public, setting the Internet alight with buzz about whether or not Microsoft’s new “Decision Engine” is better than Google at delivering valuable results.

What’s the verdict?So far, the results are mixed.

While many are impressed by Bing’s search capabilities, particularly when compared to its predecessor, Live Search, the prevailing notion is that most people won’t find enough good in Bing to leave Google.

Of course, it is important to note that I said most people and not all people.You see, some users might actually switch their preferred search engine. This is why it is more important than ever for individuals to understand how their online image appears in not just Google, but Bing and Yahoo as well. After all, 30% of all Internet searches are person-related.

So how does Bing stack up against Google and Yahoo for people searching? Let’s check out the results with the world’s most famous PC: Bill Gates. (For a different take on the state of search engines, check out Danny Sullivan’s thoughtful post at Search Engine Land.)

Check it out here: http://michaelfertik.com/news/bing-vs-google-vs-yahoo-for-people-searching/

Is Google the Enemy of the Truth?

Source: ReputationDefenderBlog

Google has taught the world that great things can be free. More than any other company, Google’s existential and commercial constitution holds that information should be free to Internet readers, in exchange for some amount of advertising revenue.

But even Google cannot give us a free lunch. The costs of this Google-culture shift are appearing, and they are heavy. Newspapers across the country are imploding as they fail to replace lost subscription, classifieds, and print advertising revenue with online eyeballs dollars. Efforts to impose subscription fees on Internet readers have met with protest, scorn, or reader disappearance.

It’s not all Google’s fault. Newspapers–and TV and radio–have been slow to change. Cross-linking among sites, which generates strong search engine ranking, has come only lately to newspaper webpages. Traditional news media have likewise only recently started to make their pages “persistent”–so that they stay up on the web permanently–which adds to search visibility over time. (Both of these “rules” of Internet life were created, basically, by Google.)

But the expectation that “information must be free” is an article of faith among the Internet generation. This is a fatal problem for journalism. Someone has to pay reporters and editors. Online advertising revenue isn’t enough: according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, half of newspaper readers reach their content via the web, but newspapers generate less than 10% of their revenue from the Internet. That’s a formula for impending doom. The media industry is laying off heavily. According to the News Cycle blog, over the past 16 months, 27,000 newspaper employees have lost their jobs. When the economy comes back, some advertising revenue will return, but most of the papers will be gone, and the higher advertising rates won’t be sufficient to bring them back.

True, bloggers and amateur journalists are filling some of the void (see the citation in the previous paragraph). But it doesn’t take a genius to observe that bloggers are simply not subject to the same tenets that the formal editorial process demands. Moreover, the economic threat of liability for libelous publications has long imposed on professional outlets incentives to get their stories right. By contrast, nearly all bloggers have small enough incomes to be judgment proof, or they are anonymous, so the barrier to suing them is much higher. The net result is a lower quality of reporting and fact-finding.

Not all the papers will die. The top five in the US will most likely thrive. This may guarantee excellent coverage of New York, LA, Washington, Chicago, Wall Street, national politics, business, and global affairs. Very local police blotters may continue to blot. But who will cover Newark, St. Louis, Boston with regularity and care? What about the smaller cities? Who will gather sources and data for small stories that later make up the infrastructure supporting the larger, trendline stories that reach across towns, states, and decades?

Hope springs eternal. The new website True/Slant is intelligently mashing up economic features of traditional publishing, Digg, Arts & Letters Daily, and pay-for-play blogging to seek revenues. The New York Times, Boston Globe, and Washington Post are creatively tying long-term subscription revenue to technology hardware purchases in a deal struck with Amazon for discounted Kindles. David Carr recently suggested in the New York Times that the SEC should hire out-of-work investigative journalists to boost their fact-finding powers. News-gathering agencies seem to be considering, at long last, endowing themselves with long-term foundation-style support. Maybe enhanced feature sets like very-first-look breaking news feeds and searchable archive access will yield unexpected sources of revenue: Walter Isaacson has suggested that readers should pay for pieces that are costly to report. Americans find ways to fill vacuums, so there’s always reason for optimism, but, at scale, good reporting needs to be financially incentivized, and we haven’t yet found solutions.

And what happens if the reporting doesn’t get done? The quality of information will decline over time. The relatively good information gathered, analyzed, and published by professional organizations will be replaced with relatively bad information from unedited and consequence-free sources. Google will continue to do what it does best: find and present massive amounts of data to consumers hungry for information. But Google will, increasingly, be finding speculation, innuendo, sloppy reporting, and falsehood. It will not be finding the truth.

Sue Scheff: Help ReputationDefender Support Nikki

When a family loses a child, I can’t even imagine the pain they endure. How they wake up the next day, how they feel, what they feel and how they go on with life. When a family loses a child in a tragic accident it seems it could only compound all the feelings of loss.

On October 31, 2006 the Catsouras family experienced the nightmare every parent fears - losing a teen in a tragic automobile accident.

The accident was the beginning of an emotional roller coaster. If you haven’t heard about this story, it is time to take a moment and help make a difference. Nikki Catsouras, after having a horrific car accident was dead on impact, the scene was described as shocking as Nikki’s head was nearly decapitated.

Can you even imagine as a parent, learning of this? Can you imagine living through this? As a parent advocate and a parent of two young adults now, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what this family has gone through.

What follows next is nothing short of evil, in my opinion. Shortly after Nikki was buried, her parents and sisters still in mourning, the Internet creeped into their lives in the most heinous way. Photo’s of Nikki’s crime scene were posted online! Yes, their daughter’s body, or what was left of it, was going viral! Where is justice? Who in God’s name would do this?

Please take a moment to read “A Tribute to Nikki Catsouras” and sign the petition to help create reasonable protection for personal privacy on the Internet.

ReputationDefender in Toronto Sun Article

Source: TorontoSun.com

Becoming web dead

Web content that sullies your reputation can be cleansed

By VIVIAN SONG, NATIONAL BUREAU


It was 3 a.m. when Lori Paris sleepwalked her way into work, ready to anchor the overnight shift at her local radio station.

As always, she went to log into her Facebook account looking for the company of virtual friends at a lonely hour, but was blocked, greeted instead by hostile "error" messages flashing on her screen.

"Then a co-worker who works down the hall ran down asking, 'What do you need help with?" Paris recalled.

While the real McCoy was sitting at her desk in a Toronto radio station, an imposter from England had hijacked Paris' Facebook profile and was pleading for help in her status message.

"Apparently, I was stuck in London and needed $500 to get home," Paris said.

"I had been robbed at gunpoint and had no money to get back."

For the next few days, Paris was fielding frantic phone calls from friends and family who were ready to fork over money.

"I didn't want anyone to get ripped off," she said.

Unlike stories of feckless users who post personal information on public profiles, Paris had restricted access to friends she approved.

She was likely the victim of a worldwide phishing attack earlier this year that used the same ruse of being stuck in London and struck a "small number of users," said Debbie Frost, a Facebook spokesman.

"We're reminding users to be very suspicious of anyone, even friends, who ask you over the Internet to send money."

But users overestimate the security levels of social networking sites and forget that they're for-profit businesses with crude security systems -- not banks, said Avner Levin, the director of the Privacy Institute at Toronto's Ryerson University.

Meanwhile, though identity thieves are creating multiple doppelgangers of people online, an opposite phenomenon has also been surfacing -- scrubbing oneself offline, or web dead.

Companies such as ReputationDefender will scour the Internet and remove unflattering material that could sully their client's online reputation. For example, when a grad student discovered a picture of her half-naked body posted by a bitter ex-boyfriend, she enlisted ReputationDefender's help. The company's strategy is surprisingly simple: They ask the site host politely. They're not a legal team, says founder Michael Fertik, but they've seldom had to resort to legal methods in the 10,000 removal requests made so far.

Not everything is erasable. Official records like court documents and news clippings are immune.

"People are alive to the fact that the web is not their enemy," Fertik said from California. "It's a fact of life and people want to have as much control over it as possible."

But what if you don't have an online profile or e-mail account, as is common among the computer illiterate? Don't be quick to congratulate yourself on preserving anonymity, experts say.

Because unbeknownst to you, you could be identified in a nephew's Facebook family picture.

"The world is changing with social media," Levin said. "People will have to play by a new set of rules. Very little is sacred or within our control anymore."

But that shouldn't mean we get little say in how our information is used, say experts at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic in Ottawa.

"The big criticism of social networking sites is that the terms of use aren't clear," said acting director and lawyer David Fewer. "The benefits are clear, but the cost of engaging in the service is unknown."

Lawyers at the clinic filed a complaint against the networking giant, alleging Facebook's policies violate Canadian privacy law by failing to identify how it collects and uses personal information, and what they do with personal information after users deactivate their accounts.

The policy must be in plain language and refrain from legalese, Fewer said, and clearly spell out privacy settings to its client base, which is made up predominantly of young users.

"The claim that privacy policies take care of everything is an incredible abdication of responsibility," Fewer said.

Facebook officials, meanwhile, maintain the complaint is flawed because it overlooks the obvious: That the data is willingly shared by users.

"At Facebook, we ... believe (the controls) are entirely consistent with both the spirit and requirements of Canadian privacy law," Frost said.

But are we asking too much of a service that, at the end of the day, is a for-profit business and not a government institution?

"We need to be reminded that Facebook is a business and has to make money," Levin said. "There's a strong sense of entitlement to privacy in social media. It's part of a larger sense of entitlement from getting things for free on the Internet like movies, music and software."

When you sign up for a free service, you "choose" to volunteer personal information that's then shared with third-party advertisers -- there has to be an exchange, Levin said.

"People have unrealistic expectations that you can get the best of both worlds. In the real world, something has to give."

vivian.song@sunmedia.ca

Michael Fertik Writes Foreword for Google Bomb! An Explosive New Book!

Pre-Order Google Bomb on Amazon.com today!

Our society has reached an all-time low. Simple keystrokes can now literally ruin lives, reputations, and cause years of suffering, and require exorbitant amounts of time, money, and sanity to rebuild a life and/or career that has been shattered by cyberbullying, Internet defamation, identity theft, privacy invasion, and so much more. There is even a term that has emerged into our lexicon that describes the practice of manipulating the ranking of web pages: Google Bomb.

Sue Scheff knows first hand about the devastating effects of Google bombing and Internet defamation. Her reputation was destroyed and she almost lost her business because of false and libelous statements about her and her business that went viral. Falling into a deep depression accompanied by agoraphobia, Sue could not escape the abusive attacks from strangers and the paranoia that accompanies such abuse. However, she fought back, and sued the figure head who launched the attack campaign and was awarded a jury verdict of $11.3 million–a case that has set the precedent for a massive debate on Internet regulation vs. free speech and Internet etiquette and safety policies.

Because there is so much to navigate and know about the unknown and mostly unchartered legal territories of Internet usage, Sue has rounded up some of the world’s most preeminent experts on the newly emerging business of Internet law, including attorney John W. Dozier. In Google™ Bomb, Dozier and Scheff offer a hybrid of memoir and prescriptive self-help, as well as a timely call to action that will arm readers with what they can do to avoid falling victim to cyber abuse, rebuild their own ruined reputations, or avoid unknowingly committing a crime against strangers on the Internet.

Written with two markets in mind: those hundreds of thousands of people who are victims of Internet harassment and cannot afford legal council to help clean up their reputations, and those who have built a career, business, and personal reputation and want to be armed with protection and prevention techniques that will help them avoid falling victim to cyber bullies, hackers, e-vengers, and Phreaks.

The true-life story of Sue Scheff’s landmark lawsuit and the lessons she learned coupled with invaluable expert advice from a top Internet legal and reputation defense expert, Google™ Bomb is a heavy-hitting, one-of-a-kind book that will likely spark debate, controversy, and save lives at the same time.

Michael Fertik, CEO and Founder of ReputationDefender which is one of the pioneers of Online Reputation Management Services, writes a compelling, informative and engaging foreword. This book is a book that will touch almost everyone that uses the Internet today.

Tweet Tweet! You’re Fired!

Source: ReputationDefender Blog

MSNBC and other mainstream media outlets have picked up on the Cisco Fatty story that involves a woman getting fired for her twitter post. Quoting from the page:

Why waste valuable social networking hours getting yourself “Facebook fired,” when Twitter allows you to humiliate yourself quickly, and in 140 characters or less?

A recent tweet by one would-be Cisco employee proves that when it comes to placing a permanent black mark on your resume via the Internet, Twitter is now the tool of choice. To illustrate, here’s the tweet the now Web-infamous “theconnor” shared with the world:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

It wasn’t long before Tim Levad, a “channel partner advocate” for Cisco Alert, shared this open response:

“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

Was “theconnor’s” job offer rescinded? Nosy netizens have yet to suss that out — but they’re doing their darndest to make “theconnor’s” life miserable in the meantime. It didn’t matter that “theconnor” almost immediately set his Twitter account to private and deleted all information from a home page. It was already too late.

Twitter is a great tool to connect people and ReputationDefender supports the emergeant micro-blogging platform. Users should be aware that potential employees are viewing online messages and that the material they post online can both help and hurt their online reputation.

Reputation Defender: A Necessary Service in Today's CyberWorld

Source: SF Gate - San Francisco Chronicle

Defending reputations may be good business

Defending innocent victims who have been slimed on the Internet is not only a righteous cause, it might be good business. At least that's what VCs who are pumping money into ReputationDefender appear to believe. The 3-year-old Redwood City company, which assists people in removing libelous, egregiously offensive or privacy-invading material from Web sites, is well on its way to raising $5.3 million from investors. "We've had 10 quarters of growth," said CEO Michael Fertik."We're getting more customers, and they're spending more." The current economic climate may have something to do with it.

One of ReputationDefender's services, enabling customer-written resumes to show up prominently on search engines, has proven to be a particular money spinner. "As people are looking more and more for jobs, they are more concerned with what may be being said about them on the Internet," Fertik said.ReputationDefender's investors so far include Maple Investments in Menlo Park and European Founders Fund from Germany.

Read entire article here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/08/BUMC16U3BS.DTL

ReputationDefender Blog: Identity Theft Made Easy with Twitter

Source: ReputationDefender Blog

In case you didn’t already know, Twitter is the latest “it” fad in the world of social media. From Demi Moore’s suicide prevention tweeting to the news of a potential Google-Twitter merger, it seems that not one week goes by without a major news story about the popular microblogging service.

Unfortunately, it isn’t all wine and roses at Twitter. Since the service emerged in 2006, one of the consistent complaints against it has been the ease with which individuals can set up phony accounts in someone else’s name. With such a large volume of users, it is impossible for Twitter to monitor each individual sign-up for validity. This means that someone could send out hundreds of tweets under your name, before you caught on. That’s what happened to Televangelist Robert H. Schuller, whose Twitter problem was discussed in a recent article at MSNBC.com.

From the article:

Televangelist Robert H. Schuller has reached millions worldwide with his weekly “Hour of Power” TV broadcasts, but when it comes to the Internet, he had a high-tech headache: an online impostor.

When Schuller, the founder of the Crystal Cathedral megachurch, recently tried to set up an account on the micro-blogging Web site Twitter.com, he discovered another user masquerading as himself.

[SNIP]
Schuller’s impersonator — who remains unidentified — seemed to know a lot about that history and the preacher’s life, said Nason, the spokesman. The impostor said in his early tweets that he was Schuller’s assistant, but then went on to say he was Schuller himself and even talked about the preacher’s wife, Nason said.

“The content seemed fairly normal for someone like Dr. Schuller to say,” Fayer said. “But in the future you don’t know how they’re going to use that. What if they start asking people to send money and say, ‘Send money to X,Y,Z’?”

The rest of the article details several other prominent phony Twitter accounts including a fake Stephen Colbert and a fake Tina Fey.

While it may not seem like a big deal to some, it is important to note that Reverend Schuller is a very prominent individual with a PR staff dedicated to catching issues like this. For the average person, it could be months before a Twitter fraud is exposed. That is why it is more important than ever for individuals to take full control of their image online and be proactive in Online Reputation Management.

Michael Fertik Discusses Online Reputation Management Services with NPR

As my new book is getting ready to be released, you can’t ignore the importance of Online Reputation Services and what they can offer to all people - whether it is protecting your children online, maintaining your reputation in cyberspace or simply having a positive online image. These services are priceless and many know my story and my success with ReputationDefender. I feel I have to say, I am not their spokesperson, nor do I receive any referral fees from them, but as a victim and survivor of Internet Defamation, I can personally attest their integrity and concern for keeping you safe in space.

Source: ReputationDefender BlogRecently the CEO of ReputationDefender, Michael Fertik, was featured on NPR - take time to listen to his sound and informational advice.

Click here:http://www.reputationdefenderblog.com/2009/03/25/michael-fertik-discusses-online-reputation-management-on-national-public-radio/ for the link to listen.

ReputationDefender Blog and Face.com

If you thought that untagged photos of you on Facebook were not going to affect your online reputation, you’ve got another thing coming. According to the New York Times, a new application utilizes facial recognition software to find public, untagged photos online.

From the page:

This one is kinda scary because of how well it works. Face.com’s new Photo Finder application for Facebook helps you automatically discover public photos that you and your friends may have forgotten to tag — and it also lets you track untagged photos of your friends.

Face-recognition technology is itself not new, but Photo Finder’s twist is how it makes use of Facebook’s interface. The social network only shows you photos of yourself containing tags about you — your name and profiled, associated with you in a given photo. Up until now, untagging a photo is how you hide a photo from your Facebook friends — the other option is to use more advanced privacy settings that restrict photo viewing to specific friends, but I’m not sure how many people use that feature.

With Face.com, your friends can bypass such social engineering to directly stalk you, or visa versa as the case may be.

[SNIP]

Sue Scheff: Taking it Offline - Face to Face

Source: ReputationDefender Blog

Taking it Offline: The Lingering Importance of Face-to-Face Networking in a Digital World

With the rise and blossoming of online networking sites like LinkedIn and ClaimID, many people, especially younger people, are doing the majority of their business networking online. This phenomenon is not anything new, and it has been covered in this blog and elsewhere.

But while it may be easier to sit in front of the computer screen and interact with your peers, it is hard to think that interpersonal relationships can ever be fully fleshed out (if you will) in the digital sphere. Face-to-face networking will never go away. The information on the Internet is not always accurate (although that doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant, according to Google’s algorithms), and there is a lot to be said for looking someone in the eyes.

Today people should try to balance their “new school” digital networking with the “old school” tried and true methods. The approach will literally double the amount of chances a person has to make an impact with a potential employer, and the effort required to do so is not unreasonable (point of fact, until a few years the “old school” method was the only game in town).LinkedIn and other popular business networking sites thrive because they offer an alternative to actually speaking with a fellow networker. The information you put in the profile becomes the equivalent of a hand shake and a greeting. Thus, a user profile, for business purposes, should be looked at as an opportunity to distinguish yourself as someone others want to know and be connected to.There are small and effective steps one can take to achieve this. Focus on brevity. 100 words is enough to grab someone’s attention and establish a positive image. If done correctly, a LinkedIn profile can, for practical purposes, be the difference between just another interview and a job offer. Conversely, a poorly written profile can have you knocked out of the running before you even get started.

Many employers look at LinkedIn as a sort of research tool. A resume can only say so much about a person, and employers are always looking to find out the little bits about a potential employee that are not immediately apparent. This fact has had disastrous consequences for some people whose Facebook and MySpace profiles contain otherwise unflattering images/language/etc. We’ve blogged that story here more than once.

Online business networking profiles are still just a piece of the puzzle, though. A successful blend of the old and the new networking techniques will counteract the deficiencies inherent in both approaches. A human touch in the new digital landscape goes a long way towards maintaining awareness and crafting image, while drawing in more localized business and opening channels previously untapped.

ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik Speaking At SXSW Today

ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik Speaking At SXSW This Sunday

Michael Fertik will be speaking at SXSW (South By SouthWest) this weekend and addressing the emerging trend of digital narcing. In the information age a variety of forces are shaping a voyeristic digital world wherein companies, individuals and governments can compile data to make more accurate decisions, for good or for ill.

From the NSA warrantless wiretaps to GPS targeted advertisements to monitoring flu outbreaks on Google, it is truly a brave new world.

Check out Michael Fertik and other panel speakers today at 5 if you are in the area.

Sue Scheff: Are you being Slimed Online?

This week my co-author, John Dozier and I, announced our exciting new book that will be released in fall 2009 from Health Communications, Inc. Then I read this article that I could really identify with. Slimed Online from Portfolio.com.

Michael Fertik, CEO and Founder of ReputationDefender, was powerful force in helping these women fight for their online image. As a client of ReputationDefender, their services are priceless - although there seems to be many of these services popping up now, as the demand grows, I feel that in my experiences, the pioneer of these online reputation management companies start with ReputatationDefender.

Our new book, Google Bomb, will be a must read for anyone and everyone that works and plays online. From protecting your online profile and reputation, to keeping your kids safe, this new book is a must have - and can potentially help you from being a victim of wicked and evil keystrokes.

Years ago gossip was limited to a geographically area that you live in. Today gossip goes viral worldwide! Your one former friend is now a foe or a few clients out of years of a reputable business have decided to take revenge via e-venge! Take cover, Google Bomb can help you protect yourself.

Sue Scheff: Features Michael Fertik and ReputationDefender in her Second Book!

"GOOGLE BOMB - TAKE COVER!" by John Dozier and Sue Scheff

Do you know what Google is saying about you?

Oh yes, it is almost here, my second book! This time around, I am honored to have co-author and Internet Specialist Attorney, John Dozier .

As my story of my landmark case of $11.3M jury verdict for damages unravels - many questions answers, John Dozier will bring us the legal landscape of today's Cyber World - how to protect your online image and maintain a profile you are proud of! Have you thought about Internet Gossip vs Internet Fact? How do you know the difference? Don’t get caught in the web - read Google Bomb!

To compound our dynamic and explosive upcoming best seller - Michael Fertik, CEO and Founder of ReputationDefender will be writing the foreword! ReputationDefender is one of the pioneers in managing online reputations and helping keep your kids privacy safe online.

This timely book will offer you tools and remedies as well as a very compelling story that will keep you turning those pages! Remember, a 20 year reputation today can be destroyed within 20 minutes of vicious keystrokes.

Monkeys Don't Fly? Do they? Ahhhh, just wait and you will see - the Internet has become its' own animal. The Internet can be an educational tool - but - it can also be a lethal weapon!

Published by Health Communications Inc. (HCI) - Google Bomb will be released in Fall 2009.

Lawsuit Cracks Open Online Anonymity

Read entire article here: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/Story?id=6960397&page=1

The Law as an Accomplice

Legal experts, however, emphasized that the law protects Web sites like Topix. Even if the comments are considered defamatory by a court of law, Topix has no legal obligation to take the content down.

Defenders of the legal landscape argue that a change could stifle open discussion and free speech. But others maintain that in stories like this, regardless of who emerges, once the veil of anonymity is lifted, it is the law itself that is a co-conspirator.
"The law as it currently stands is an accomplice because it creates no incentive whatsoever for Web sites to review or police themselves from content that is potentially devastating to real people and real lives," Michael Fertik, a lawyer who specializes in online defamation, told ABCNews.com.

Part of the problem, Fertik continued, is that laws that made sense at the birth of the Internet age have not matured. It takes years to redress online defamation problems under the present regime. But, in the meantime, libelous comments easily found through search engines can sideline both personal and professional lives.

Although privacy and free speech advocates worry that changes to the law could "chill" online speech, Fertik argued that "the law can easily catch up without destroying speech."
But until then?

"The law provides the red dye for the scarlet letter," Fertik said. "It provides the ink for the tattoo that people create on Web sites like this."

Sue Scheff: Reputation Defender Blog

Seeking Alpha recently published the Q4 Earnings Call for the financial website TheStreet.com. Despite reporting decreased ad revenues and a loss for the three month period, Thomas Clarke did identify new steps that his company was taking to strengthen revenue and brand awareness. Apart from aggressively pursuing increased advertising revenues, the Chief Executive Officer mentioned broadening available content to site readers early in the call.

Quoting from the page:
Our strategic decision a few years ago to further expand our content sets to include a fully array of personal finance information and application to complement our equity focus will continue to be foundations we build upon. With the launch of MainStreet and BankingMyWay and our relationship with Geezeo, TheStreet.com today provides users with the information they need across the entire personal finance space in one convenient network. In addition, we continue to add best of breed services such as INSWEB, ReputationDefender, and [Money Owl] to allow those interested to take action, further bolstering our performance revenue stream.

ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik recently wrote an article about the online reputational risks professionals, students and companies are now facing. ReputationDefender is proud to be the leader in the online reputation management space and works to mitigate reputational risk online.