While reading the new book by Cyrus Farivar entitled Habeas Data we began to think about what an honest privacy policy might look like. Then things quickly got out of hand. Enjoy.

The genie is out of the bottle. In this day and age, everything is public and visible. A plethora of information floats around the internet and trying to control who posts what feels like boiling the ocean. To make it worse, it takes so much time to build a reputation and only one bad moment to tarnish it.

Many businesses focus on SEO, social media and content to build their online presence. One way to accelerate your online growth is to focus on growing your brand through citations and mentions. Both Google and Bing have indicated that they can track brand mentions and that they matter for search engine rankings. Duane Forrester, a former senior product manager at Bing, stated that unlinked mentions can be just as strong a signal as links for measuring a site’s authority.

Remember when Donald Trump said "America should never have given Canada its independence"? Well, that was fake. Fake news has a long and storied history. Ben Franklin spread propaganda stories by creating a fake issue of the Boston Independent Chronicle. Today celebrities, politicians and everyday people are affected by it. Tomi Lahren of Fox News was recently quoted as saying "If you die in a mass shooting, it's not the fun's fault, or even the gunman's fault. It's your fault for not believing in God enough". She didn't say that either.

Bad search results can kill a brand. Unfortunately, it can't all be removed, but some of it can. For content in search results that can be removed, this guide will let you know every way there is to make it go away. 

Here are a few of the ways online content can be removed - either from the site itself, or from search results - both are avenues to the same outcome - lower, or no, visibility of the negative content online. 

Brand touch points are like digital fingerprints; they tell a story. What are brand touch points and how do they affect business? Whether you realize it or not, your brand's customer touch points are working to help, or hurt, your organization's reputation with consumers. If a potential customer sees brand-related content and it piques their interest, what will they do next? They may perform a branded search (using your company name), in which case it's up to Google what your customer sees. How dost Google love thee?

Remove TheDirty.com permanently, in 30 days or less.

A good reputation is built slowly over a lifetime, but it can be lost in a single instant when a negative article has been posted on TheDirty.com.

Fortunately, we're here to help. At Reputation X, we have a successful track record in doing what seems impossible - reclaiming your online reputation. Reputation X can usually remove a post on TheDirty.com within two to four weeks. If we can't do it, it's free. 

Everyone who uses the internet has interacted with bots. Bots chat with us on apps, leave comments on articles and videos, and write social media posts. We know that bots have the ability to put words together coherently. But can bots write entire articles by themselves?

Sometimes you need to invoke one law or another to support or attack a particular position. If we had a dollar for every time a politician claimed that “the law states this” or “the courts agree that,” well, we wouldn’t be in the web reputation management business. We’d be sitting on a beach somewhere.

The dirty little secret, though, is that the law—both written statute and decisions handed down by the courts, which are charged with interpreting statute—is often open to interpretation, especially when it’s relatively new and untested. Some of the body of online reputation law fits the “new and untested” bill. And while other elements are more settled, they don’t universally benefit those looking to burnish their online image. So while these five areas of the law may help your web reputation campaign, they may also work against it. In any event, this article will help you weigh the pros and cons, and consider the resources that might be involved.

Over the years we've managed the online reputations of a lot of executives. Industries have included clothing, manufacturing, hospitality, biotechnology, government (foreign and domestic) and many others. But an especially large portion have been executives in financial service related industries. This case study focuses on one of those whose problems included the New York Times, Bloomberg and Ripoff Report. Names and circumstances have been adjusted to some degree to protect the identity of our client.

Note: The illustrative examples provided in this article are of similar people and entities in order to protect the identity of our client.