Every day we hear of more stories of people's Reputation getting smashed instantly online. On a personal level it just plain sucks, and causes mounds of heartache, headache, paperwork, and costs. To a business or a brand, there are risk mitigation and compliance issues, trademark defense costs, and reputations getting taken down, despite having been built up over years or decades.
It could be any trigger. Even, a mistaken identity or you share the same name as someone who gets in trouble.
Or it could be malicious from criminals, or cyber hackers looking to steal your identity, or file false tax returns to claim fake refunds, or to make it appear you were the one who did something when in reality it was someone pretending to be you.
The problem is multifaceted in that it can come from almost any angle, and happen at any time relatively instantly thanks to the linkages that exist between content, social media and search. I have written about this triangulation before as it relates to cyber security and how we all need to look at the this inter-relationship, and it's effects on all of us.
It is extremely important to understand that your real life - offline, not digital experiences now can and will be instantly transmitted by others, with or without your knowledge and with or without your consent.
The little every day things, from getting coffee to getting dressed, to private conversations between two people are suddenly potential fodder for instant intent smearing, reputation trashing and persistent online harassment. Just because someone else had a smartphone on.
This is without writing harsh or bad emails, or saying inappropriate things, or doing illegal or immoral things. The above is just for the regular people who now find themselves in the daily potential trap of someone else deciding to make an internet mockery of them. Just Because. But then, there are the people who are out there willingly doing things to disrupt their families, their businesses, and themselves. There is an entire group of people doing these things every day, hoping no one will post their baggage online and trash them. Some even think it can never happen to them. They are above recrimination or above being outed for whatever proclivities they engage in.
My company Digijaks offers boutique solutions for high impact individuals, brands and organizations to deal with the combination of cyber security, social media and reputation management and control. We see and hear all kinds of stories. Those from people who are completely innocent and just get caught up in something a bad person did. Those from people who admit to making mistakes and now are working to try to fix the damage or prevent it from happening. Then there are those who just think things will never catch up to them. But they do.
The reality is, the ability to trash reputations, for others to control your reputation is all too real. Whether you like it or not.