Are “Reputation Defenders” A Threat To The Free Internet?

One of the most hotly debated topics in the past year is about whether or not “reputation defenders” are damaging the free Internet. These companies make money by charging consumers a fee (usually hundreds of dollars) to remove defaming and reputation-damaging information. I am not sure about all of them, but I know the ones I have dealt with either directly or indirectly have used some fairly fishy techniques to remove information.

Takedown Notices

Back in May of 2006 an online friend of mine asked me about a notice he received. It was a fairly well written takedown notice that demanded him to remove a comment about a company he posted on his website. I checked his post and there was nothing even remotely defaming in it, yet the notice claimed there was.

Because he ignored it they claimed they contacted his web host, but apparently they didn’t do anything either. The use of takedown notices to remove anything other than illegal content is incredibly illegal (they are, after all, legal notices!) and quite frankly the use of it in this situation made me feel sick.

Harassing E-Mails About E-Mail Content

When I first started blogging I received an interesting e-mail from one of those “reputation defenders” who claimed I posted defaming content about one of their clients. I asked them for a link to the source, and they sent me an e-mail I sent to the person (just that person) in which I said, “Sorry, I just checked your site and it doesn’t look like something I’d want to link to”. Apparently that is just horribly defamatory and caused the guy/girl/it to have horrible nightmares. Well… too bad… it was a spam site and I didn’t want to link to it.

I replied, “You do know there’s nothing bad about that e-mail, right?” The fool who worked for the reputation defender then said he was going to sue me for calling him a liar. My reply to that was blunt, “try it, that way I can record you getting laughed out of the court room”. Haven’t heard back from him since then (Yeah Bill, I’m still waiting for the summons, where is it?).

Blackhat SEO

While I have not personally done an investigation into this, from what I have heard “reputation defenders” do some pretty nasty blackhat SEO to get their client’s sites to the top, while attempting to get the supposedly reputation-killing content either removed from or pushed down in the search results. Based on my experience with those companies, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it were true.

Conclusion

Those are just a few quick stories about my experience in dealing with “reputation defenders” both directly and indirectly. There’s many more I could share, but unfortunately that would make this post ten times longer than it already is.

While I do think the concept of those companies is good and honorable (if content is horribly defamatory it should get removed!), I do think for the most part they don’t care about their clients, they simply want to make a quick buck, and they are willing to lie and intimidate to get it. I think the problem is there are sick people out there who hire these companies with a malicious intent. They don’t want bad information removed, they just want to silence their critics, which is about a stupid as you can get. As long as those people exist malicious companies will also exist.

Have you ever dealt with companies who claim to be reputation defenders? If so, which side were you on and how did it go?

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