Stanford Business Magazine Profiles ReputationDefender, Stanford MBA Owen Tripp

Recently ReputationDefender COO Owen Tripp was sourced for an article in Stanford Business Magazine. Mr. Tripp, who holds an MBA from Stanford, provided insight into online privacy, online reputation management and and identity theft in the information age. The article discusses possible pitfalls facing professionals and businesses online, and notes the problems that people encounter when negative listings appear in search engine results. Even when the individual is blameless, they can still be adversely affected by not proactively managing their online identity. Quoting from the page:

LAST MAY, a Connecticut woman with a Stanford MBA was surprised by a stranger’s phone call asking about her personal background. That’s when she learned that a woman in Washington state with a similar name had apparently lifted details of her biography off the internet, including her graduate degree from Stanford, and was using it in her profile on an online social networking site.

The Washington woman, it appeared, had used the Google search engine to look for her own unusual name, and the Stanford MBA’s biographical information popped up. With a few clicks, the data was hers. She used it to enhance her business profile on networking site LinkedIn.

In January, another Stanford alum, Liz Lynch, discovered that an Australian man had taken an article she wrote off the internet, slapped his own byline on it, and posted it on his website. Lynch, MBA ’92, learned this when she tried to submit the piece to an online article directory, and the fake author’s name surfaced. To add insult to injury, Lynch was accused by the directory of being the plagiarist.

This sort of cyber squatting is becoming commonplace these days.

Owen Tripp, MBA ’08, cofounder of ReputationDefender, a company that sells security services and helps victims clear up online profile problems, believes resume and credential theft is a growing problem in today’s dismal economy. “Everyone’s trying to get a leg up, to create a great resume that’s going to get them that good job, or to build a better credit profile to help them buy that house,’’ he says.

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[ReputationDefender employs] “deep” searches that the average computer user cannot do. When a suspected offender is located, Tripp says his company simply contacts the person and asks that he or she desist. Surprisingly, the approach usually works. But in many cases, the damage has been done and can be long lasting. Offensive or fake postings can be removed from sites, but often they can lurk somewhere in cyberspace forever. A doctor whose identity was used by an imposter to commit Medicare fraud is still trying years later to convince people he is not the man who perpetrated the fraud.

It is clear that managing one’s online identity is critical in a world where business, romance, commerce and networking take place online. The professionals at ReputationDefender are the leaders in providing identity solutions for the information age.