Facebook: A Place for Cyberstalking

by Mat Bettinson

So says the National Centre for Cyberstalking Research

The first British study into so-caller 'cyberstalking' has fingered Facebook as the most likely avenue for the harassment suffered by online stalking victims.

Prepared by researchers from the University of Bedfordshire's National Centre for Cyberstalking Research (yes, there is such a thing), the draft report called Cyberstalking in the United Kingdom (pdf) has been presented to MPs as part of a parliamentary inquiry into Cyberstalking.

The report authors said that males were more likely to experience a "harasser" damage their reputation while women were more likely to "focus on fear of physical harm," the report said.

Most of those surveyed by the report had their initial contact with their stalker offline, although eight per cent initially met via social networking. However after the initial contact, social networking was the preferred method for cyberstalkers to harass their victims, ahead of webmail and text messages.

The report authors said that providers of online services had a "duty" to their users to combat cyberstalkers.

"There needs to be a clear process so users know how to report harassment and a time limit so a site must respond within a set number of days," report author Professor Carsten Maple told the BBC.

Online Reputation and Personal Responsibility

Sites are cropping up all over the internet that promise to protect your reputation online. This started me thinking about online reputation and personal responsibility in the face of an ever shrinking online world.

At what point does our personal responsibility for our own online reputation end?

In this internet age, your reputation is not just everything, it's everywhere.

Logging on to sites like FaceBook and MySpace, we are confronted with the changing face of society. A younger set perfectly content to put every detail of their lives online, without regard to the consequences. What effect does this propensity of information and lowering of boundaries have on the average individual's future? On the average company?

The answer is that it can adversely effect both individual and company in a variety of ways. Most people who have been online longer than ten minutes know the term "to get dooced" mean to be fired for blogging during/about work. The term was coined for blogger Heather Armstrong, who writes the blog Dooce, and who was one of the first bloggers to find out just how entwined your online reputation is with your offline one. It worked out well for Dooce (her blog is still going strong), but in most cases it works out poorly for he individual.

A company can face even more serious repercussions if its reputation goes in the toilet online. That is why so many companies are adopting strict policies blocking and/or regulating access to the internet at work. One slip by an employee on their personal site, blog or social network profile page can have a company facing serious repercussions for leaked products and other fiascos. That doesn't even begin to touch on how employee conduct may reflect on certain organizations that depend on having a clean reputation to do business.

Add in to the mix the anonymity of the web, which makes people lower their guard even further, and you can have a real mess on your hands. Most people will change their behavior if they think they can get away with it, and the web breeds an erroneous feeling that "no one can see the real you". In face, online, everyone can see the real you. All of the information that has ever been online about you, both private and public, is usually only a few clicks away. That's a sobering thought that most people don't ever pause to consider.

Companies have been cropping up in recent months to handle the new need for online reputation monitoring in the age of hyper connectivity. Some of these companies, like Techrigy, got their start as something else (in the case of Techrigy, a blog backup service is evolving into a reputation protector for companies). Reputation Defender is making a name for itself helping several women lawyers manage their images after they viciously attacked online. Other companies cropping up to help either companies or individuals keep their reputations and identitiy intact include: Stolen ID Search, MyPublicInfo, Claim ID, Naymz, Choice Point, and new uses for old school application LexusNexus.

All of those companies charge steep fee for what amounts to little more than damage control. Once your reputation flounders online, the ensuing ripple effect is often hard to staunch before it becomes a river. For all attacks on individual reputations, a little discretion fro the moment you first log onto a computer and start posting information about yourself would go a long way. Unfortunately, sometimes even the most cautious and circumspect can fall afoul of a vindictive soul (or souls). There are always going to be internet users who see the curtain of anonymity as license to be abusive and libel others, and they are hard to shake once they become fixated on someone.

Companies have their share of zealot opponents too, but they have an easier time dealing with them. By having a response come from the top of the organization immediately upon being faced with a problem, being sincere, and keeping the response as transparent as possible, a company can do much to staunch the hemorrhaging of its reputation due to one incident (the Gizmodo response to the indictment of its action at CES was one example of how not to act when your reputation is challenged online). If a company hasn't been careful with its reputation in the past, or simply puts out a terrible product or service that gets more than just a little bad feedback, they maybe they need to hire an online reputation repair service after all.

In my view, personal responsibility goes much further than damage control. Face the fact that unless you have been hyper-vigilant every minute of every day both on and offline, chances are you have something stupid, somewhere, sometime. Even greater are the chance that you or someone else got it on camera, blogged it or otherwise put it out there for the world to see. When that happens, being as forthright as possible about your own actions will go much farther to correct the situation than an online reputation management firm ever could.

In the end, your online reputation is up to you, the individual, and you, the company. Education is key - know where your data is going to be used, and how.

Pay attention to how you present yourself online. Take note of your actions and how they could be construed by others. Behave online as if your mother was looking over your shoulder, instead of as if you were hiding behind a curtain of anonymity, free to be as hurtful as you please. Remember that there are consequences for your actions, even online, though they may not be the ones you expect. If all else fails, face the music with square shoulders and a responsible attitude.

SOURCE

Online Reputation and Personal Responsibility

Sites are cropping up all over the internet that promise to protect your reputation online. This started me thinking about online reputation and personal responsibility in the face of an ever shrinking online world.

At what point does our personal responsibility for our own online reputation end?

In this internet age, your reputation is not just everything, it's everywhere.

Logging on to sites like FaceBook and MySpace, we are confronted with the changing face of society. A younger set perfectly content to put every detail of their lives online, without regard to the consequences. What effect does this propensity of information and lowering of boundaries have on the average individual's future? On the average company?

The answer is that it can adversely effect both individual and company in a variety of ways. Most people who have been online longer than ten minutes know the term "to get dooced" mean to be fired for blogging during/about work. The term was coined for blogger Heather Armstrong, who writes the blog Dooce, and who was one of the first bloggers to find out just how entwined your online reputation is with your offline one. It worked out well for Dooce (her blog is still going strong), but in most cases it works out poorly for he individual.

A company can face even more serious repercussions if its reputation goes in the toilet online. That is why so many companies are adopting strict policies blocking and/or regulating access to the internet at work. One slip by an employee on their personal site, blog or social network profile page can have a company facing serious repercussions for leaked products and other fiascos. That doesn't even begin to touch on how employee conduct may reflect on certain organizations that depend on having a clean reputation to do business.

Add in to the mix the anonymity of the web, which makes people lower their guard even further, and you can have a real mess on your hands. Most people will change their behavior if they think they can get away with it, and the web breeds an erroneous feeling that "no one can see the real you". In face, online, everyone can see the real you. All of the information that has ever been online about you, both private and public, is usually only a few clicks away. That's a sobering thought that most people don't ever pause to consider.

Companies have been cropping up in recent months to handle the new need for online reputation monitoring in the age of hyper connectivity. Some of these companies, like Techrigy, got their start as something else (in the case of Techrigy, a blog backup service is evolving into a reputation protector for companies). Reputation Defender is making a name for itself helping several women lawyers manage their images after they viciously attacked online. Other companies cropping up to help either companies or individuals keep their reputations and identitiy intact include: Stolen ID Search, MyPublicInfo, Claim ID, Naymz, Choice Point, and new uses for old school application LexusNexus.

All of those companies charge steep fee for what amounts to little more than damage control. Once your reputation flounders online, the ensuing ripple effect is often hard to staunch before it becomes a river. For all attacks on individual reputations, a little discretion fro the moment you first log onto a computer and start posting information about yourself would go a long way. Unfortunately, sometimes even the most cautious and circumspect can fall afoul of a vindictive soul (or souls). There are always going to be internet users who see the curtain of anonymity as license to be abusive and libel others, and they are hard to shake once they become fixated on someone.

Companies have their share of zealot opponents too, but they have an easier time dealing with them. By having a response come from the top of the organization immediately upon being faced with a problem, being sincere, and keeping the response as transparent as possible, a company can do much to staunch the hemorrhaging of its reputation due to one incident (the Gizmodo response to the indictment of its action at CES was one example of how not to act when your reputation is challenged online). If a company hasn't been careful with its reputation in the past, or simply puts out a terrible product or service that gets more than just a little bad feedback, they maybe they need to hire an online reputation repair service after all.

In my view, personal responsibility goes much further than damage control. Face the fact that unless you have been hyper-vigilant every minute of every day both on and offline, chances are you have something stupid, somewhere, sometime. Even greater are the chance that you or someone else got it on camera, blogged it or otherwise put it out there for the world to see. When that happens, being as forthright as possible about your own actions will go much farther to correct the situation than an online reputation management firm ever could.

In the end, your online reputation is up to you, the individual, and you, the company. Education is key - know where your data is going to be used, and how.

Pay attention to how you present yourself online. Take note of your actions and how they could be construed by others. Behave online as if your mother was looking over your shoulder, instead of as if you were hiding behind a curtain of anonymity, free to be as hurtful as you please. Remember that there are consequences for your actions, even online, though they may not be the ones you expect. If all else fails, face the music with square shoulders and a responsible attitude.

SOURCE

Managing Your Online Reputation

Doug Beckstead and Jeff Dunetz are trying this to combat their exposures. - EOPC

by Antony Mayfield

The measure of your reputation is what you do plus what others say about you. That was one of the first things I learned in PR. A reputation can be managed, and can be influenced by the things we do, but it can never be designed or decided upon by its holder. Reputation is earned.

As the social web has distributed the power and influence formerly held by the mainstream media, it has created the need for personal reputation awareness. And despite being a long-time user of social media, I found I learned some new things as I navigated these waters for myself. Below are three tips that I found useful.

1. You Are Your Network
I had a call from a BBC researcher asking for background on social networks. The breaking story that day was that personal details and embarrassing photos of the newly appointed head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, were splashed all over one newspaper. The source? His family’s Facebook profiles.

It made me think about my own family’s personal details and images. What if I became a story? What would a journalist find? My profile’s privacy settings were locked down, but sure enough, a few clicks showed that my wife’s was wide open.

It was a clear lesson: If you want to manage privacy, reputation, and your security to any extent, you have to think about those around you — especially those who are not as tech-savvy.

2. If You Can’t Delete, Compete
Although it’s a good idea to ask people to remove embarrassing content about you, in the majority of cases the best course is to make sure that you are the first and best source of information about yourself appearing on Google (Google) and other major search engines. “Crowding out,” or pushing that embarrassing party photo down in the search rank can be achieved over time. This approach is best combined with an ethos of developing a thicker skin.

The time may soon come when so much content about our lives is online that we get suspicious if we find no unpolished or slightly embarrassing bits about someone when we look. Why are they so perfect? What are they hiding?

Reputation is a messy and uneven business. Playing the content game is often preferable to an all out war — a battle you will most likely lose.

3. There’s a Cottage Industry Around “Reputation Protection”
In discussing online reputation with friends and colleagues, they predicted that there would be services that offer “the digital equivalent of tattoo removal.” While I didn’t doubt that there would be demand for this kind of thing, I wondered about how it would be realistically implemented.

There is, in fact, a small industry growing up to help people manage how their privacy is affected by the web. At the high end, rich and powerful celebrities now hire digital security specialists to help them lock down everything from their voicemail inbox, to their e-mail and Facebook accounts, and to look for the weak points where stalkers or prying journalists might try to get some juicy information.

For the rest of us, a host of services promise to safeguard your identity and reputation online — I even get one service free with my credit card. It tells me less than my Google Alerts, though, so I’m broadly skeptical about the effectiveness of services like this. At best, they should be combined with an effort to develop personal web literacy and an understanding of how to manage online reputation responsibly.

Conclusion
It is incredibly important that we help our friends, colleagues and families understand the social web. They make up our most valuable social networks. And when you understand networks, you understand that their success and well-being is intrinsically linked to your own.

As Howard Rheingold says, “What you know or don’t know about networks can influence how much freedom, wealth and participation you and your children will have in the rest of this century.”

It should be the goal of every web-savvy professional to have their online reputation precede them.

SOURCE

Managing Your Online Reputation

Doug Beckstead and Jeff Dunetz are trying this to combat their exposures. - EOPC

by Antony Mayfield

The measure of your reputation is what you do plus what others say about you. That was one of the first things I learned in PR. A reputation can be managed, and can be influenced by the things we do, but it can never be designed or decided upon by its holder. Reputation is earned.

As the social web has distributed the power and influence formerly held by the mainstream media, it has created the need for personal reputation awareness. And despite being a long-time user of social media, I found I learned some new things as I navigated these waters for myself. Below are three tips that I found useful.

1. You Are Your Network
I had a call from a BBC researcher asking for background on social networks. The breaking story that day was that personal details and embarrassing photos of the newly appointed head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, were splashed all over one newspaper. The source? His family’s Facebook profiles.

It made me think about my own family’s personal details and images. What if I became a story? What would a journalist find? My profile’s privacy settings were locked down, but sure enough, a few clicks showed that my wife’s was wide open.

It was a clear lesson: If you want to manage privacy, reputation, and your security to any extent, you have to think about those around you — especially those who are not as tech-savvy.

2. If You Can’t Delete, Compete
Although it’s a good idea to ask people to remove embarrassing content about you, in the majority of cases the best course is to make sure that you are the first and best source of information about yourself appearing on Google (Google) and other major search engines. “Crowding out,” or pushing that embarrassing party photo down in the search rank can be achieved over time. This approach is best combined with an ethos of developing a thicker skin.

The time may soon come when so much content about our lives is online that we get suspicious if we find no unpolished or slightly embarrassing bits about someone when we look. Why are they so perfect? What are they hiding?

Reputation is a messy and uneven business. Playing the content game is often preferable to an all out war — a battle you will most likely lose.

3. There’s a Cottage Industry Around “Reputation Protection”
In discussing online reputation with friends and colleagues, they predicted that there would be services that offer “the digital equivalent of tattoo removal.” While I didn’t doubt that there would be demand for this kind of thing, I wondered about how it would be realistically implemented.

There is, in fact, a small industry growing up to help people manage how their privacy is affected by the web. At the high end, rich and powerful celebrities now hire digital security specialists to help them lock down everything from their voicemail inbox, to their e-mail and Facebook accounts, and to look for the weak points where stalkers or prying journalists might try to get some juicy information.

For the rest of us, a host of services promise to safeguard your identity and reputation online — I even get one service free with my credit card. It tells me less than my Google Alerts, though, so I’m broadly skeptical about the effectiveness of services like this. At best, they should be combined with an effort to develop personal web literacy and an understanding of how to manage online reputation responsibly.

Conclusion
It is incredibly important that we help our friends, colleagues and families understand the social web. They make up our most valuable social networks. And when you understand networks, you understand that their success and well-being is intrinsically linked to your own.

As Howard Rheingold says, “What you know or don’t know about networks can influence how much freedom, wealth and participation you and your children will have in the rest of this century.”

It should be the goal of every web-savvy professional to have their online reputation precede them.

SOURCE

Man Arrested for Spam Threat

by Bruce Golding

Maybe he thought their slogan changed from the company you keep to the company you cheat.

A broke former New York Life employee was busted on charges he tried to extort $200,000 from the insurance firm by threatening to smear it with a spam attack of 6 million e-mails, the feds announced yesterday.

Anthony Digati, 52, allegedly vowed to use a "spam service" and his skills as a "huge social networker" to drag the company "through the muddiest waters imaginable."

The Chino, Calif., man also told his ex-employer that the price would go to $3 million if it failed to pay up by yesterday, according to a Manhattan federal court complaint.

Digati, who was declared bankrupt last year with more than $1.2 million in debts, allegedly targeted the company after becoming "dissatisfied" with the performance of his own universal life-insurance policy.

original article here

Man Arrested for Spam Threat

by Bruce Golding

Maybe he thought their slogan changed from the company you keep to the company you cheat.

A broke former New York Life employee was busted on charges he tried to extort $200,000 from the insurance firm by threatening to smear it with a spam attack of 6 million e-mails, the feds announced yesterday.

Anthony Digati, 52, allegedly vowed to use a "spam service" and his skills as a "huge social networker" to drag the company "through the muddiest waters imaginable."

The Chino, Calif., man also told his ex-employer that the price would go to $3 million if it failed to pay up by yesterday, according to a Manhattan federal court complaint.

Digati, who was declared bankrupt last year with more than $1.2 million in debts, allegedly targeted the company after becoming "dissatisfied" with the performance of his own universal life-insurance policy.

original article here

Woman Fears for Her Life due to Cyberstalker

by Angela Sachitano

FLORIDA resident Deborah Riley hasn't been able to find a job in months. Google her name and she understands why.

Log on to deborahkayriley.com and a website dedicated completely to trashing her repuation appears.

Comments like 'she is on cocaine and crystal meth' and 'sleeps with anyone on the first date.'

This is only a small part of what Riley's ex boyfriend, Alex Dimusto, is accused of writing on the site he created.

"I feel violated and hopeless," Riley said. "It seems like there is nothing in place to protect the victim."

Riley says Dimusto purchased her name and other similar domains like it a few weeks after she broke up with him in January.

She says he has continued to fill the pages with lies.

"I wrote to web.com and they sent me to the abuse team," Riley said. "They told me I had to get a court order."

Riley has gone to the courts to get the website taken down and is currently waiting on a hearing, which could take another week.

In the meantime, we got in touch with Dimusto over the phone today.

When asked if he created the site, Dimusto answered, "I did not but I might know someone who did."

But according to godaddy.com, Dimusto is in fact the owner of the domain 'deborahkaeyriley.com.'

We also talked with a lawyer, who says Riley could have a strong libel case on her hands.

"This could be actionable," said attorney Barry Balmuth.

Riley says she not only fears for her reputation, she fears for her life. She says she only dated Dimusto for two months and wonders how far he will go to ruin her.

"He has told me he is going to put me in a dark place where no one can find me," she said.

According to Balmuth, here is what it takes to prove libel on the web - or anywhere for that matter:

Statement of fact - such as "She's a drug addict." Not a stated opinion, such as "I don't like her."
Has to be proven false.
Statement made carelessly or intentionally.
Damage to reputation.

original article here

Woman Fears for Her Life due to Cyberstalker

by Angela Sachitano

FLORIDA resident Deborah Riley hasn't been able to find a job in months. Google her name and she understands why.

Log on to deborahkayriley.com and a website dedicated completely to trashing her repuation appears.

Comments like 'she is on cocaine and crystal meth' and 'sleeps with anyone on the first date.'

This is only a small part of what Riley's ex boyfriend, Alex Dimusto, is accused of writing on the site he created.

"I feel violated and hopeless," Riley said. "It seems like there is nothing in place to protect the victim."

Riley says Dimusto purchased her name and other similar domains like it a few weeks after she broke up with him in January.

She says he has continued to fill the pages with lies.

"I wrote to web.com and they sent me to the abuse team," Riley said. "They told me I had to get a court order."

Riley has gone to the courts to get the website taken down and is currently waiting on a hearing, which could take another week.

In the meantime, we got in touch with Dimusto over the phone today.

When asked if he created the site, Dimusto answered, "I did not but I might know someone who did."

But according to godaddy.com, Dimusto is in fact the owner of the domain 'deborahkaeyriley.com.'

We also talked with a lawyer, who says Riley could have a strong libel case on her hands.

"This could be actionable," said attorney Barry Balmuth.

Riley says she not only fears for her reputation, she fears for her life. She says she only dated Dimusto for two months and wonders how far he will go to ruin her.

"He has told me he is going to put me in a dark place where no one can find me," she said.

According to Balmuth, here is what it takes to prove libel on the web - or anywhere for that matter:

Statement of fact - such as "She's a drug addict." Not a stated opinion, such as "I don't like her."
Has to be proven false.
Statement made carelessly or intentionally.
Damage to reputation.

original article here

UPDATE: Doug Beckstead's Damage Control

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

UPDATE: Doug Beckstead's Damage Control

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.