Online privacy and reputation is going to be big business over the next few years. The last couple of weeks have seen the beta launch of both London’s Garlik and US-based Reputation Defender. Both of these subscription services offer to scour the web for you, find every trace of your name and optionally attempt to delete it by contacting the service providers responsible for its storage. (Reputation Defender also offers a service allowing you to spy on your child, which is another matter entirely).
According to a study by counsellors at Purdue University, “1/3 of employers screen job candidates using search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. 11.5 percent look through social-networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga for the profiles of job candidates.” This practice is only going to increase as employers become more aware of how much information can actually be obtained online. As digital natives move from trainsurfing to applying for accountancy degrees, the detritus of their online past could become quite harmful.
But thoroughly respectable adults also have reason to be concerned. Garlik’s co-founder Tom Ilube told me of his surprise at finding floorplans of his house on his local council’s website following an application for permission to build an extension. Nothing to hide there, but do you really want that sort of thing to be in the public domain without your permission? According to Ilube, the time is right for a mass-market privacy service as the general public start to become aware of just how much data about them is being stored online. The growing problem of identity theft — more than 100,000 britons were affected last year according to Garlik, at a cost of £1.7bn — is also addressed by the service.
It will be interesting to see how successful they are at actually delivering what they promise. After reading of people’s difficulties in simply having negative or incorrect Wikipedia profiles deleted, I have to be a little sceptical.
Share this post:
The analogy to this is erasing files off your disk. Even if these companies can get “most” of the references erased to an individual, they will not be able to get all of them. The reason is because unlike a disk which is well confined and mostly contiguous, the internet is not. A lot, not most, of the data on individuals is not found on web pages around the net. Most is hidden in databases.
Does anyone in this group know all the databases where your name and other information is stored; and for what reason? I think not. And even if I knew some of them, would you know which tables, whether the information is encrypted and behind which firewalls?
Oh, how about 3rd party articles about oneself? What about blogs such as this?
Well, yes. I guess the hope would be that they come to a financial arrangement with Google, Yahoo, MS and so forth, whereby the number of transactions would make it worthwhile for everybody.
As to 3rd-party stuff, it’s going to be a tricky negotiation between freedom of speech, fair comment and reputation defence.
Ian, you are spooking me with your headlines, well this one anyway, not to mention the fact that Thayer emailed me about Reputation Defender just the other day!
Setting this (perhaps unsurprising) synchronicity aside, what do you reckon to the theory that the web-trail of past deeds/midemeanours will become less imporant for society in the future, specifically employers, which is what I outlined in my similarly-titled post on life caching from March 2006?
HA! Well, if I read you right (and what a great post!) FC’s argument was that a trainsurfing past (and the like) may serve new employees well, ultimately, or not matter at all, because they’re applying for jobs that just didn’t exist in the past and demand being a digital native.
It’s a good argument. But. How many of the organisations you’ve worked for does that work for? None here. It would wash well for the organisation I’d *love* to work for, though.
I reckon Garlik and Reputation Defender are aiming for the mainstream, though. The sort that are still pretty wary about internet shopping and worry there’ll be a sting in the tail before too long. “Sure I’ll pay £15 a month if it will keep me safe. There be demons in that there tinternet”.
(what’s a young thing like you doing with Abba-inspired headlines? I know life is hard in the owd country, but please.)
What do you reckon that Philosophy & Linguistics Prof Peter Ludlow has done to his reputation with his recent SL Herald posts? (I am totally on the fence here, sorry. I can see that there’s good and bad).
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/10/a_gallery_of_li.html
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/11/yet_another_fak.html
Well now well now boys and girls. On the one hand I can see the logic underlying Ludlow’s claim. On the other, he is like, angry unplugged!
But some good things have come out of it, not only a better understanding on his part of Crayon and their background, but the discovery (for me) of the category :‘F***tards In Cyberspace’ — utter brilliance! Then there’s the ‘F***tards Have Feelings Too’ riposte from a merry PR blogger ;)
Some of the best debates I’ve seen in the blogosphere have emerged out of such bust-ups. Because often, in admid the argy bargy, you get to find out what people’s deeply held beliefs are.
And his RL reputation? Increased in the eyes of some and diminished in the eyes of others I guess…
BTW, I know most of this won’t make sense to readers unless they read the pieces you have linked to in the Second Life Herald, but I can’t summon the powers to briefly recap their contents.