Reputation Management Online

The law firm Wragge & Co have started to fight back by developing a Cyber Tracing team, see article from Birmingham Post.  Is a move in the right direction to evetually stop annonymous posting? To be honest how can they really tackle it, there are so many variables, people, ISPs,  you may be able to trace a few people, but if I set up a Gmail account or Hotmail account and use Internet Cafes to post comments how can they trace that?  The resources and costs involved will be massive.  OK a lot of people won’t realise how easy it is to track people through their IP number which is just like a telephone number, but given time people will wise up to it and won’t post from their home pc.

What happens if the person making the attacks is based in Russia or Africa for example, whats the chances of stopping them and taking them to court?  So although I think law firms are starting to think in the right direction I do feel that the only real way to prevent such attacks on companies and peoples reputations is to protect them through reputation management and if necessary through the legal channels.

By the time the courts have ordered a blog, website, forum thread to be taken down the damage has been done and you’ll probably find another 15 have already replaced it.  Also you can’t remove a comment if it is factual and someone’s opinion (as long as it’s within reason).

So the easiest and most cost effective way is to protect yourself is through reputation management and damage limitation, if  you can’t bury the negative content then the final step would be to take legal action.  By being proactive and filling the net with positive content, will help prevent this happening in the first place.  Like Cancer if treated early and preventive measure put in place then you can stop the spread and quite often eliminate it all together.  So don’t bury your head in the sand and ignore it, it’s much easier for us to work with a client who is not already bombarded with negative content in the search results.

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