Worried about your e-reputation? Then pay someone to wipe your past

By Alexandra Radius

 

Anyone looking for a job these days will live in fear of their prospective employer unearthing some dubious photo on Facebook or dodgy blog post that could jeopardise their application. But never fear, new businesses are now beginning to appear that promise to repair your online reputation for you.  Indeed, here in France, the online reputation management sector is particularly hot, with numerous firms now focusing on this emerging market.

 

One example is Reputation Squad, which specialises in "e-reputation" management and is staffed by IT specialists, lawyers and communication professionals. It identifies the authors and publishers of ‘offending’ web content and asks them to delete it (or at least to modify it, by replacing the name of their client with his or her initials). If they are unable to contact the owner of the website, they simply “drown” the embarrassing story by posting SEO-enabled content that pushes it down the search engine rankings.

 

Even though I find this concept very intelligent, I also find it a little dubious. If someone can change your past, who’s to say they won’t also improve your online reputation by fabricating some positive stories?

  

For me this new trend makes the internet less democratic, as it allows those who can afford it, to manipulate their reputations to their own advantage.  Too bad for those who can’t afford it.  But I guess that’s a story as old as time.

  

However, it is difficult to see how this concept will catch on completely.  There will always be those who stand up for the freedom of the press, freedom of speech and who are prepared to  speak out against censorship of any kind – particularly in a country like France!  If we can’t believe what we read, then what is the world coming to?

Comments

[Reputationsquad]

Dear Alexandra,

I wish to comment on this very interesting post. I strongly disagree with the fact that companies such as ours are making the Internet less democratic.

Indeed, the Internet is currently not as democratic as it should be. Many of our clients are everyday people with no access to mainstream media or not Internet-savvy enough to react to online problems.

They are being summarized or their carreers by the first few pages of results on search engines. As you know you never get a second chance to make a first impression... and they are sometimes unable to find jobs or partners because of information that can be wrong, misleading or very old.

We are also always careful when choosing our clients and what they expect from us, we are not in the business of building fake reputations but in the business of giving people a chance of getting heard.

Best regards,

[Alexandra]

I agree with you that in a time where intrusion of privacy is rife and online media has become so powerful, e-reputation management agencies may have their place. In the case of this blog, I was thinking of more extreme situations such as the example given in Le Monde where a business man called upon e-reputation management services to delete his past as an arms dealer. It will be interesting to see the predominant way in which these services are used in the future and if all agencies will be as discerning as yours in the clients they take on.