Sue Scheff: Reputation Defender Blog - Tweet, Tweet - You're Fired!

Source: ReputationDefender Blog

MSNBC and other mainstream media outlets have picked up on the Cisco Fatty story that involves a woman getting fired for her twitter post.

Quoting from the page:

Why waste valuable social networking hours getting yourself “Facebook fired,” when Twitter allows you to humiliate yourself quickly, and in 140 characters or less?

A recent tweet by one would-be Cisco employee proves that when it comes to placing a permanent black mark on your resume via the Internet, Twitter is now the tool of choice. To illustrate, here’s the tweet the now Web-infamous “theconnor” shared with the world:
“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

It wasn’t long before Tim Levad, a “channel partner advocate” for Cisco Alert, shared this open response:

“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

Was “theconnor’s” job offer rescinded? Nosy netizens have yet to suss that out — but they’re doing their darndest to make “theconnor’s” life miserable in the meantime. It didn’t matter that “theconnor” almost immediately set his Twitter account to private and deleted all information from a home page. It was already too late.

Twitter is a great tool to connect people and ReputationDefender supports the emergeant micro-blogging platform. Users should be aware that potential employees are viewing online messages and that the material they post online can both help and hurt their online reputation.

Face.com Launches Untagged Photo Face Finder Application

Source: ReputationDefender Blog

If you thought that untagged photos of you on Facebook were not going to affect your online reputation, you’ve got another thing coming. According to the New York Times, a new application utilizes facial recognition software to find public, untagged photos online.
From the page:

This one is kinda scary because of how well it works. Face.com’s new Photo Finder application for Facebook helps you automatically discover public photos that you and your friends may have forgotten to tag — and it also lets you track untagged photos of your friends.

Face-recognition technology is itself not new, but Photo Finder’s twist is how it makes use of Facebook’s interface. The social network only shows you photos of yourself containing tags about you — your name and profiled, associated with you in a given photo. Up until now, untagging a photo is how you hide a photo from your Facebook friends — the other option is to use more advanced privacy settings that restrict photo viewing to specific friends, but I’m not sure how many people use that feature.

With Face.com, your friends can bypass such social engineering to directly stalk you, or visa versa as the case may be.
[SNIP]

Sue Scheff: What is Google Saying About You?

Source: Portfolio.com

Forget your references, your ­résumé, and the degree on your wall. “Whatever’s in the top 10 ­results of a search for your name on Google—that’s your [professional] image,” says Chris Martin, founder of the small internet company Reputation Hawk, which is one of several outfits that focus on keeping that top 10 clean for their clients.

For victims of cyber-slurs, cleanup doesn’t necessarily mean removing bad press. Companies like eVisibility, Converseon, and 360i concentrate on generating ­positive content—but not too much at one time. If Google detects a ­sudden flood of suspicious Web postings, it will assign them low trust scores, preventing them from rising to the top of search results.

Nino Kader, CEO of International Reputation Management, uses a positive-content approach, calling its strategy a mix of “old-school PR and high tech.” The firm builds social profiles (on MySpace or Facebook) for clients and promotes them to blogs; it also drafts news releases and solicits coverage from traditional press outlets. Scrubbers generally work on retainer and charge anywhere from $500 to $10,000 a month.

A handful of scrubbers do try to actually remove negative content, using coercion, compromise, and occasionally cash. A first step is to contact the website and ask that the harmful post be removed. “For us to pay the site for removal is very uncommon, but less than 1 percent of the time, we have to do it,” says ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik, whose company charges a monthly fee and $30 for each item they persuade a website to remove. If a site refuses to erase an offending post, the next step is to negotiate a compromise. Ask the site administrator to substitute a screenshot for the actual text of the harmful post (a screenshot is an image, so the words no longer register as text to Google and won’t come up in a search).

When it comes to your online image, these companies argue that no one can afford to shrug off a slight. As Fertik says, “The people who are reading stuff about you on the internet don’t have to believe what they read about you beyond a reasonable doubt.” They just have to believe it enough to not hire you.

Sue Scheff - Parenting Teens for their Online Future

As a parent advocate, I encourage parents to learn more about online safety. A great place to start is Reputation Defender! Remember, your child may be a “child” today, but soon they will be applying to college and filling out employment applications. Will their online profile be acceptable?

Take a moment to learn more!

What is MyChild?
MyChild by ReputationDefender scours the Internet for all references to your child or teen - by name, photography, screen name, or social network profiles - and packages it to you in an easy-to-understand report. Worried about bullies? Concerned that your teens’ friends and peers are posting inappropriate materials online? MyChild searches every corner of the Internet for traces of your kids. If you want to help your teen manage their online reputation, but have felt powerless to do so, ReputationDefender is your answer!

Sue Scheff - Websites Promoting Internet Safety

Connect with Kids constantly keeps parents updated on today’s kids and issues surrounding them. Today’s techy generation need even stronger parenting.

Reputation Defender MyChild is a great place for parents to start in keeping their child’s privacy “private!”

Sue Scheff: The Internet Generation - Internet Safety

Today’s kids have grown up online. Finding their way around the Internet and posting on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook is part of their every day life. But in this online world … What are they saying? Who are they “talking” to?

How can we keep our kids safe from danger – both emotional and physical?Did you know that 70 percent of teens on the Internet have accidentally found pornography on the web; 60 percent have been contacted online by a stranger; another 60 percent have been victims of online bullying; and 45 percent have posted personal information?

The Internet Generation tells of online experiences and stories your kids may not be telling you about this 24/7 cyber- world. You’ll hear insights on setting specific rules, keeping track of kids’ online visits, and talking with them – armed with hard facts and real-life examples – about the very real threats out there.

When it comes to Internet know-how, can parents ever catch up with their kids? Yes. Watch The Internet Generation and start the conversation with your children about what’s on the Internet – the good and the bad. The Internet is here to stay, and it’s our responsibility to keep kids safe, especially when they’re online.

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Connect with Kids constantly keeps parents updated on today’s kids and issues surrounding them. Today’s techy generation need even stronger parenting.

Reputation Defender MyChild is a great place for parents to start in keeping their child’s privacy “private!”

Free Speech or Lack of Parenting?

I was contacted by CNN News in regards to this recent story.

As a parent advocate, I am proactive in helping parents protect their children in Cyberspace - whether it is monitoring their MySpace account - or using other protective measures such as Reputation Defender/MyChild to monitor your child’s privacy - but this story completely shocked me.

How can a parent condone a 13 year old writing about a principal in sexual ways? Where is this coming from? The parent is claiming their son has “free speech” - and they are correct about that, but when your 8th grader is calling someone a rapist or child molester without any substantiated evidence, in my opinion, this could be considered defamation - and as my beliefs continues - “Free Speech does not condone defamation.” Furthermore - the writings of “giving students anal” or “jacking off in my office” - is absolutely disgusting that a 13 year old writes this way. This is my personal opinion.

Read Below:

FEBRUARY 21–The parents of an Ohio boy who was expelled this month for creating a phony MySpace profile that described his middle school’s principal as a child molester have filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the 13-year-old’s free speech rights have been violated by education officials. Toader and Marianna Osan claim that their son (who is identified only by his initials in U.S. District Court filings) was improperly booted from the eighth grade at Hillside Middle School in Parma after educators learned of the boy’s creation of a MySpace page for principal Jeff Cook. The MySpace profile, which was headlined “Your Princeypal,” did not carry Cook’s name, but it included his photo and identified him as the Hillside Middle School principal. The since-removed profile, an excerpt of which you’ll find below, listed Cook’s general interests as “giving students anal” and “jacking off in my office,” and named his heroes as Michael Jackson, Adolph Hitler, and Saddam Hussein. For his vulgar online handiwork, “M.O.” was first suspended, and then, on February 7, was informed that he was being expelled (for “malicious harassment”) until June 10, effectively the end of the school year, according to a February 20th court filing. His parents argue that students “disrespecting teachers outside of school is an age-old tradition, and one from which teachers neither need nor deserve protection…It would be naive to think that even the most popular principal is not the subject of student ridicule and parody.” The Osans are seeking their son’s immediate return to school and a judicial order protecting his off-campus speech, which previously included the observation that Cook had an affinity for the Purple Penetrator, a sex toy.