Privacy has always been a right and today there are many laws set in place to protect those rights like HIPPA and others. Today however an individual’s or brand’s right to privacy no longer exists. With the internet and specifically Google any privacy we once enjoyed is now pretty much gone. What is also gone is the right of fair play, honesty and often reality found in those search results. If the 2016 election showed us nothing; it showed us just how reality and facts can be altered or just plain changed in the cyber age. The old adage innocent till proven guilty is now way back in the rear view mirror of reality of the internet. Today one must prove their innocence without any proof whatsoever regarding facts, reality or guilt. A recent article I read regarding cyber defamation the author actually suggests to those who may have been wrongfully defamed on the internet, “the best thing you can do is apologize for the offending content when applying for jobs, meeting a perspective mate and even when trying to conduct business.”
There is a host of web sites today ready, willing and able to assist a stalker or corporate saboteur to post anything they like regarding anyone or any brand anonymously without fear of liability or consequences. These dubious web sites have one goal in mind when accepting this content. The final goal is to make money. The business model is simply to appear at the top of any entities Google search results with the absolute worst possible financial impact on that entity. One of these web sites was called by a judge in a recent court filing “a sick form of cyber extortion.” Simply put these sites charge large monthly or yearly fees to redact, remove or conceal the content located in their pages. It has spurred a multimillion dollar industry that only looks to grow until laws are changed to respond to this new form of extortion.
There is very little legal recourse to resolve the issues that arise from cyber attacks. The American Bar Association has published a piece regarding this unique relatively new form of attack in the article dated to 2013 Cyber Defamation. Within the article it talks about the difficulties with prosecution as in many cases the author are anonymous and the web sites that actually publish the content are protected by the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The act protects publishers of third party content from any form of liability since they are only a form for the author to exercise their first amendment right to freedom of speech. There has been successful prosecution of anonymous authors, but the cost is high and the only satisfaction a party can receive is an injunction for redaction or removal from web sites and search engine results. The process is lengthy and costly as you may have guessed and many sites simply ignore these injunctions as does Google in many cases today.
Online Reputation Management (ORM) seems to be the only realistic resolution to the problems of cyber defamation. Quite simply fighting fire with fire by having relevant positive information appear at the top of an entities Google search results. Pushing the negative content to the back pages where few searchers ever actually look. Reputation Pros a top Reputation Management firm does this every day. Sounds quite easy on the surface and most people think it will be. Ultimately it is not. Let us not forget that the defamation sites have a financial interest in holding top rankings on a Google search and other web pages like news media are held in very high regard in Google search rankings. There are things an entity can do like posting social media sites and blogs in the hope that the content will outrank the offending negative content. The fact is that most individual entities who try thin on their own will fail. There is a reason large corporations, famous individuals and even simple business owners pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for quality effective reputation management.
Don Troiano - Information.
