What we hear or read about someone can shape our ideas well before we actually meet them. That makes some believe that reputation could be the next online-identity risk.
“He who steals my purse steals trash . . . but he who filches from me my good name . . . makes me poor indeed.”
This loose paraphrase from Shakespeare’s “Othello” highlights the value many people place on their reputation — which some believe could be the next online-identity risk. What we hear or read about someone can shape our ideas well before we actually meet them. And even after we have met someone, our perception can be altered by follow-up comments from peers, friends and even strangers.
With the increasing use of social networks, it is becoming easy to post potentially defaming comments anonymously on any number of sites. Malicious comments can be spread through blogs, Internet forums, chats and e-mails without the subject’s knowledge. Emerging “rate my . . .” sites allow anyone to post comments about employers, managers, teachers and others.
The Web provides an almost limitless canvas on which to paint a bad picture about someone. With more and more companies searching the Web for information about prospective employees and clients, concern is growing that negative online comments can harm — if not destroy — a person’s reputation.
These concerns have given rise to reputation-management companies that, for a fee, will search the Web regularly to identify potentially damaging information. Once such information is found, they will attempt to remove or minimize the information. Some companies will contact each site that has an offensive posting and request it be removed; others will use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to bury negative information below reputation-enhancing blog and forum entries they create for their clients.
Neither technique is 100% effective, however. Some Web sites will claim First Amendment protection as a reason to ignore a request to remove a negative comment, and companies that use SEO techniques run the risk of being blocked by search engines if they appear to be using rule-breaking techniques to manipulate page-order ranking.
How concerned should you be about your online reputation? If you rarely use social-networking sites and have a limited “Web presence,” the odds are small there is any defamatory information being posted about you. On the other hand, if you are active in social networks or regularly post to blogs and forums, you have a greater Web presence and the risk of encountering negative comments increases. Even then, the impact of negative comments can vary from person to person.
If you search on my name, you will see that many of my columns have been reposted to a variety of sites and blogs with reader comments ranging from “on the mark” to “boring,” to “what an idiot.” Some may view the negative comments as a risk to my reputation, but I see them as part of being a columnist. I’d rather have negative comments than no comments at all, so my reputation remains as untarnished — or tarnished — as it ever was.
For many people, however, reputation management is critical to their careers and personal lives. The increasing use of social networks, blogs and interactive forums may result in reputation management becoming a crucial component of a complete identity-protection strategy.
