Computerworld did a story about whether you can bet bad things deleted about you from the Web. They found that, unsurprisingly, you generally can’t. Of course, there are exceptions. Slashdot, this blog, and one of my others combined to get thousands of scammy, lying web pages taken down from the site JLove. But those pages contained clear-cut, no-two-ways-about-it falsehoods, and were automatically generated to boot.
And so I repeat the advice I gave before:
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.
… The internet WILL tell stories about you, true or otherwise. Make sure your own version is out there too.
