Electronic service offers to help college job seekers clean up web reputation
Nate LipkaIssue date: 4/10/08 Section: News
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Beyond the punch-in-the-face irony, these gun-shy users raise an interesting question: what happens when users, faced with a job market increasingly-dependent on web searches in the hiring process, want to kill off their outdated e-personas - including undesirable information posted on other people's accounts, blogs or elsewhere on the internet?
ReputationDefender, a new company based out of Louisville, Kentucky, utilizes both high-tech finesse and legal brawn to both scan the internet for and help to destroy such damaging items.
"Our product's endeavor is to give people some measure of control over how their identity is portrayed on the web," said ReputationDefender spokesman Paul Pennelli.
For $10 a month through the company's MyReputation product, ReputationDefender will scan the internet for information on a customer using its own search engine, which utilizes a "recursive search" that can find hits on the "invisible web," password-protected sites that Google and other popular search engines often miss.
At the customer's request, ReputationDefender will then have any unwanted items removed for $30, usually by writing an official letter to the particular website's host on behalf of the customer.
"If our search process is very high-tech, which it is, our destroy search process is a little bit lower-tech," Pennelli said. "Generally, when you're talking about a big social network, like a Myspace or a Facebook, we will literally, very politely communicate to the publisher of the information or the host of the information about this piece of potentially libelous, slanderous, inaccurate or otherwise unwanted piece of content that's being hosted on their site. It's a very persuasive communication that we've owned over the years."
Pennelli said that the first attempt at communicating with a site's host more often than not results in a successful item deletion.
"Thankfully, we've built up enough brand equity over the past couple years where, when a lot of these publishers and websites hear from us, they're generally fairly receptive."
If an individual or website is not so receptive, a second, strongly-worded letter is sent out. Occasionally, ReputationDefender takes on more aggressive action, Pennelli said.
Beyond the social implications of an embarrassing net-identity, Pennelli said party pictures and other "potentially-damaging material" can have a long-term detrimental effect on a new graduate's job search.
"When we talk to college students," Pennelli said, "what we advocate to them is, of course, you can get value from using MyReputation services, but using a higher level of personal responsibility on social networks yourselves, as college students, can have a positive impact on your online reputation."
According to Pennelli, however, it's never too late to take action. "The fact is, the longer information is out on the internet, the more it's favored by search engines," Pennelli said. "So, there's a very real possibility that the readers of College Times - there are things on the internet that aren't going to hurt them to get an entry-level job. But in five, six, seven years ... this information has the potential to sort of bubble back up to the surface."
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