With every passing day, people are becoming more aware of the importance of online reputation management and of how the content they share online can affect their lives in dramatic ways.
In an amusing segment in last night’s episode of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman offered some tongue-in-cheek advice to individuals struggling with an online reputation management problem. While intended as satire, the segment offered some valuable information about how simple mistakes online can become major issues thanks to the viral nature of the Internet.
Many people don’t know it, but every day data miners scour the Web for information about each and every one of us. Pulling data from public records, social networking profiles, commercial databases and more, they chop up our personal information into tiny bits, cross-index it using sophisticated computer technology, and then auction it off to the highest bidder in neat little packages.
Like the aliens from the famous 1956 sci-fi film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, data snatchers live here among us, going unrecognized among other more common privacy threats. Often, individuals don’t know that their data is at risk until it is too late: when they are stalked, scammed, denied a job, or declined for health coverage.
There are solutions out there though, such as the powerful personal privacy tools from Reputation.com. To learn more about how Reputation.com can help you protect your privacy, with our free tools and our suite of paid products, visit Reputation.com/GetPrivacy.
In the meantime, watch this video and behold the horror! If you have a privacy horror story of your own (identity theft, denied a job, etc.) please share it with us on Twitter using the hashtag #privacyhorrorstory.
It should be no surprise by now to learn that we’re pretty serious about online reputation management here at Reputation.com, but there are still many people out there who are unsure whether or not ORM is important to their lives. Obviously, we think the answer is yes. Whether you’re looking for a job, trying to run a business, or even just meeting someone for a date, your online reputation plays a huge role in determining your success.
Rather than taking our word for it though, why not find out for yourself?
In a recent interview for New Scientist, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik talked about the importance of online reputation management. As a supplement to the interview, New Scientist created this cool ORM flow chart that offers advice on how to improve your online reputation and what to do if your good name has been trashed on Google. Check out the flow chart below, and if you wind up in the “Get Help!” bubble, contact the experts at Reputation.com today.
Internet tracking is something we talk about a lot here at Reputation.com. Usually though, we talk about it in the context of Internet companies and people-search databases using personal data to create digital dossiers and sell them to the highest bigger. (By the way, we’ve developing some very exciting tools to help you remove your personal data from the Web in case you were interested.)
The fine folks at North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) have a different idea when it comes to Internet tracking. It’s still invasive, but it’s also fun.
For more than 50 years, NORAD (and its predecessor CONAD) have tracked Santa Claus during his world-spanning Christmas sleigh ride. In recent years, the tracking has gone high-tech, featuring Google Earth and even a mobile app to check Old St. Nick’s flight plan. Presumably, Santa is in on the tracking, which makes it okay. If Santa violated your privacy by checking in to your house on Foursquare, that would be a problem.
For more information about NORAD’s Santa Tracking efforts, check out the official NORAD Santa Tracker website. Also, check out this cute video from NORAD.
In today’s Quick Hits, we look back at privacy issues throughout the year, debate the merits of friending parents on Facebook, and talk about online tracking and the FTC.
Facebook, often a target for concerns over privacy issues, has run into trouble again, this time in South Korea. According to the Washington Post, working from a Bloomberg report, “the Korean Communications Commission called Facebook’s privacy policy “inadequate,” and wants details on how it shares information with third parties. The regulatory agency’s main concern seems to be about user consent over shared information.”
In its end-of-the-year analysis of top tech trends, ReadWriteWeb has put out a piece discussing why privacy was such a big issue in 2010. The article goes into detail on some of the big privacy news items from the year, including issues with Facebook privacy settings, Google’s privacy problems with Google Buzz and Street View, and the recent WikiLeaks saga, among other pertinent issues. For a recap on the privacy issues of 2010, you couldn’t ask for a better article.
While Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) lost out to Fred Upton (R-MI) for the role of Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the congressman “plans to keep his position as the co-chair of the privacy caucus next year” and will continue to be active in consumer privacy issues according to The Hill.
In the most recent edition of the New York Times Tech Talk Podcast, host Bettina Edelstein talks with Tanzina Vega, a New York Times media reporter, about the FTC’s proposed “Do Not Track” option that would allow consumers to opt out of advertising networks and decline online tracking. The podcast discusses consumer reaction to the proposal, as well as the concerns voiced by the Internet advertising industry.
As more and more older adults begin joining Facebook, their children are faced with the prospect of becoming online friends with their parents. Mashable has a humorous flowchart from Cool Material that helps Facebook users make the difficult choice of accepting or denying their parents’ friend requests. Check it out below.
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