When those crude things you said while drunk at a party a couple of years ago during show up online, it may ruin your career chances.
Now there’s a new start-up, ReputationDefender, that will try to remove harmful references to you online, contacting Internet sites and requesting they take them down.
Started by 28-year-old Harvard Law School grad, Michael Fertik, the Louisville company is relocating to Menlo Park, Calif., after having raised under $1 million in angel investment from unnamed individuals, according to VentureWire today (sub required).
He charges $9.95 per month to $15.95 per month, depending on how long a customer signs up for the service. The company will then crawl the Web looking for comments or material that refelect negatively on you, and charge an extra $29.95 for each attempt to get the material removed, whether or not is successful.
Presumably, only comments considered “libelous, slanderous, defamatory or invasive can” legally be forced off the Web. Here’s a helpful FAQ at the site.
4 Comments
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Kevin L. said:
We, (MerchantCircle), delved into the reputation management side for SMBs back in December, scraping and aggregating any mention of a business owner across the web. It’s something that’s troubling for business owners when more and more customer review sites are showing up on the web.
I wonder how reputation manager will keep customers from leaving after a month. Unless you’re Paris Hilton, do you really keep generating negative comments about you on the web?
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Alan Champlin said:
I find it amusing — albeit strangely appropriate — that a person like Michael Fertik is the prime mover behind a reputation management website. Mr. Fertik himself doesn’t have the best web reputation (google him for yourself if you don’t believe me), which makes me wonder if this is a case of a single, troubled person thinking that something for which he has a singular need is useful to the rest of us. Personally, I don’t lose sleep worrying about what people are saying about me on the web. Does Mr. Fertik believe this to be a particularly pervasive problem? If so, does that say more about the web, or Mr. Fertik?
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Search EnginesWeb said:
Unfortunately. some of the info will still be traceable via The Internet Archive - Wayback Machine
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Roman said:
As an attorney, there are several troubling issues with this start-up. Since the trigger for removal of negative information is that information being slanderous/libelous, determining what is slanderous/libelous is in the realm of legal practitioners not corporate entities. This may mean that the start-up could be practicing law without a license. Certainly, issuing any “cease and desist” letters on behalf of 3rd parties would have to prepared by attorneys, and these attorneys would not be able to be part of ReputationDefender’s staff.
Taking all of the above into consideration, the cost of services rendered by outside counsel would most likely fall out of the price of $15.95 per monthly subscription, making ReputationDefender destined to the great web 2.0 graveyard. (Assuming they don’t get charged with practicing law without a license first)
