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: ReputationDefender Blog

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.

French Press Writes Up Michael Fertik, ReputationDefender

Courrier International has a nice piece about Reputation Management, Michael Fertik and ReputationDefender.

The article is in French, but speaks to the emerging industry that ReputationDefender pioneered, Online Identity Management.

Interested readers who do not parlez francais, can check out Babelfish to get the international buzz on ReputationDefender.

Sue Scheff - Features ReputationDefender, Michael Fertik - writes Foreword of New Internet 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.

Sue Scheff: What is Google Saying About You?

Source: Portfolio.com

Forget your references, your ­résumé, and the degree on your wall. “Whatever’s in the top 10 ­results of a search for your name on Google—that’s your [professional] image,” says Chris Martin, founder of the small internet company Reputation Hawk, which is one of several outfits that focus on keeping that top 10 clean for their clients.

For victims of cyber-slurs, cleanup doesn’t necessarily mean removing bad press. Companies like eVisibility, Converseon, and 360i concentrate on generating ­positive content—but not too much at one time. If Google detects a ­sudden flood of suspicious Web postings, it will assign them low trust scores, preventing them from rising to the top of search results.

Nino Kader, CEO of International Reputation Management, uses a positive-content approach, calling its strategy a mix of “old-school PR and high tech.” The firm builds social profiles (on MySpace or Facebook) for clients and promotes them to blogs; it also drafts news releases and solicits coverage from traditional press outlets. Scrubbers generally work on retainer and charge anywhere from $500 to $10,000 a month.

A handful of scrubbers do try to actually remove negative content, using coercion, compromise, and occasionally cash. A first step is to contact the website and ask that the harmful post be removed. “For us to pay the site for removal is very uncommon, but less than 1 percent of the time, we have to do it,” says ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik, whose company charges a monthly fee and $30 for each item they persuade a website to remove. If a site refuses to erase an offending post, the next step is to negotiate a compromise. Ask the site administrator to substitute a screenshot for the actual text of the harmful post (a screenshot is an image, so the words no longer register as text to Google and won’t come up in a search).

When it comes to your online image, these companies argue that no one can afford to shrug off a slight. As Fertik says, “The people who are reading stuff about you on the internet don’t have to believe what they read about you beyond a reasonable doubt.” They just have to believe it enough to not hire you

Sue Scheff: Prevent Cyberbullying

Vanessa Van Petten continues to bring valuable information for parents with today’s teens. This week she has dedicated to helping prevent cyberbullying.

Partners for CyberBully Awareness Campaign:

Thank you to everyone who is already offered to join and spread the word about our anti-cyberbullying campaign here at On Teens Today:Angeline of MomStyleNews

Vivien Bruss of Cool Moms Rule

Brenda Preston of Safewave
Sue Scheff of Help Your TeensMyrna of TangerineTimes.com
Tara Paterson of the Mom’s Choice Awards and Just for Mom

Karen Pease

ReputationDefender/MyChild

Sue Scheff: Video Reputation Management - ReputationDefender

Do you feel the need to trust a professional service to monitor your online reputation protect your privacy, and maybe even use for civil and criminal lawsuits? ReelSEO’s Grant Crowell interviews Michael Fertik, CEO of ReputationDefender, about where automated tools are today with monitoring video online, what’s expected to improve with advances in technology, and what are some of the best ways people can go about monitoring and managing their ‘video reputation’ today.

Michael’s Bio

For some background, Michael Fertik’s company profile reads: “a repeat Internet entrepreneur and CEO with experience in technology and law. After law school, he clerked for Chief Judge Danny J. Boggs of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. In his capacity as CEO of ReputationDefender, Michael serves on the advisory board of The Internet Keep Safe Coalition (iKeepSafe), a non-profit that works for the health and safety of youth online.”
The following video clip features an roundtable panel discussion about online reputation management with Michael Fertik on “Digital Age” - WNYE/Ch 25 (NYC TV):
http://www.reelseo.com/video-reputationdefender-fertik/