I've recently discovered a new kind of online scam. It's elegant in its simplicity. It's hard to combat, because all it steals is reputation. What's worse, it preys on ordinary people who, unlike many enterprises, may not have enough of a web presence to easily fight back.
JLove, billed as Jewish dating service, is simply generating a huge number of pages falsely claiming that various people are members of its service. It's basically a new version of an old technique. The classical form of the technique is to generate a website on every conceivable travel destination, using free content from somewhere, but adding no value. JLove goes further, by generating pages for many combinations of more or less Jewish first names and last names, which then falsely claim the person with that name is a member of their service. More details of JLove's shenanigans are here, including examples of real-life harm or great annoyance.
A variety of people have asked about how to combat this kind of scam, and there's really only one good answer: Everybody should have their own web presence, visible to the search engines. Of course, that's easier said than done, but my two-part (so far) advice about search engine optimization for enterprises has a lot of applicability to people as well. For starters, if you don't already have a personal web page (with your name in the URL), get one. Then get a few friends (or your employer) to link to it. And so on.
In the specific case of JLove, you can also help by linking to the blog post cited above, which calls JLove out. But for the more general case -- well, it boils down to this. The internet WILL tell stories about you, true or otherwise. Make sure your own version is out there too.
Curt Monash is a leading analyst of and strategic advisor to the software industry. Praised by Lawrence J. Ellison for his "unmatched insight into technology and marketplace trends," Curt was the software/services industry's #1 ranked stock analyst while at PaineWebber, Inc., where he served as a First Vice President until 1987. He subsequently co-founded Evernet, Inc., a $40 million networking systems integrator. Since 1990, he has owned and operated Monash Research, an analysis and advisory firm covering software-intensive sectors of the technology industry. In that period he also has been co-founder, president, or chairman of several other technology startups.
Curt has served as a strategic advisor to many well-known firms, including Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, AOL, CA, and Netezza. Curt earned a Ph.D. in mathematics (Game Theory) from Harvard University. He has held faculty positions in mathematics, economics and public policy at Harvard, Yale, and Suffolk universities.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
There is a great, economical answer to protecting your id online
Curt-
You have hit on an issue many people face daily. I ran into the problem when another "Andy Greider" started ringing up DUI's. It wasn't too long before people would ask - "are you from Chicago?" Ugh!
Then I found out about QAlias (www.qaliassignup.com) - an amazing service that lets me control what people see first about me - and gives me a top traffic server to link to for helping up my SEO on the things I link to. Google me - Andy Greider - and check it out. I think you and your readers will benefit from knowing about it.
Andy
Being found online
"Everybody should have their own web presence, visible to the search engines." What a great suggestion. This is essential to anyone who wants to take control of what the web says about you.
I have found many ways to do this without having to have your own website. QAlias.com is one service and I am an enthusiastic subscriber for just the reasons that you stated in your article. I would like to recommend it to your readers.
Charles Fellingham google me!
In replying to a thread on shady web tactics, it's ironic ...
... that you're using shady tactics yourself.
I'm guessing that neither of you is a real QAlias subscriber. More likely, you're enthusiastic because you're paid to put up comments like that.
Cheers,
CAM
claimID offers free identity / disclaimer links
claimID offers a free service (and an OpenID) where you can specify URLs that are (or are NOT) about you. For sites you control, you can embed a marker that claimID will use to verify that you actually control the site.
"JLove, billed as Jewish
"JLove, billed as Jewish dating service, is simply generating a huge number of pages falsely claiming that various people are members of its service"
Hi this sounds like the same spambot cam I got hit by in June - there are aleast 2 companies that I know of that are getting away with doing it - what it is, is roughly one big database of profiles of people that have been phished or collected en mass using a white labelled website - anyone who adds their profile to the site is put accross the whole network - your profile could be on adult sites or any cloned site that uses the software - I was spamboted by funnation , a clone of Quechup (a US company) I've reported funnation to antiphishing.org as I've had a good, clean relationship with my contacts on facebook this last year - jointeffort (the Russian company that own the spambot) have ruined my reputation by spamming 639 people and nearly getting me banned from facebook - where I have invested alot of my time setting up groups and applications.
Actually, Zara, you seem to be talking about something worse
JLove has made-up info that consists solely of the false claim that a person is a member.
You seem to be talking about something more detailed than that, and harder to fight. My idea of getting some TRUE web page up about yourself should be good enough to fight JLove and its ilk, but it could backfire vs. full scrapers.
Curt Monash