Anna Vander Broek has a smart article over at Forbes that profiles Online Identity Management, Online Reputation Management and ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik. Specifically, the article looks at the impact Google results have for job seekers. The piece examines how potential employees and professionals can optimize their Google results and cultivate a professional online identity. Quoting from the page:

“Treat Google like your résumé,” says Michael Fertik, founder of the online reputation management service, ReputationDefender.com. If your first five Google hits highlight your old job as a market analyst it may be hard to sell yourself as a travel writer.

[SNIP]

“Know what you want and who you are,” says Fertik. This may mean you need to choose what to keep online and what to remove. You don’t always show your serious side to your friends or your party side to your boss. The same rules apply online.

If you’re unhappy with your Google hits, there are a few things you can do. Think about using a service like Fertik’s own ReputationDefender.com, which can help you manipulate your Google results, among other things, pushing positive links higher and negative ones lower. Giant sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will be higher in Google searches, so focus on those sites first.

[SNIP]

“Google is now a utility for every life transaction,” says Fertik. “You have to keep yourself fresh.”

Keeping information about yourself current, updated and relevant will ensure that your online identity is an accurate reflection of who you are.

Jennifer Leggio, a social media and online reputation expert at ZDNet, recently had her twitter account mimicked in an aggressive act of personal brand impersonation. She eventually resolved the issue, but in talking with her colleagues, she found out that anyone is at risk for personal brand attacks online:

I know I’m not alone. Chris Brogan told me this morning that this has happened to him a handful of times. But it’s not just people with large Twitter or social networking followings who need to be careful about character assassination via the Web — it’s anyone online. We all have something to lose.

Later, Leggio talks to Owen Tripp, COO of ReputationDefender and gets some expert insight on protecting her personal brand online. She even signs up for MyReputation to better protect her online identity.

I wrote last year about a great company called ReputationDefender, a personal reputation and privacy protection service. I reached out to co-founder and executive vice president Owen Tripp again today about this situation, and ask some questions that might help folks better protect their brands or their companies’ brands.

“The best protection is prevention or prophylaxis.  Claim your LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace identities before somebody else does it for you and starts to damage your reputation. By establishing accurate information on these key domains you will prevent others from hijacking them from you,” Tripp said. “Also, you need to stay in control of your online brand by monitoring proactively.  You will limit the damage of brand hijacking if you quick recognize that you are under attack.  In my experience, too few people know how to properly set up the personal searches they need to be able to run in order to fully control their identity.”

When I asked Tripp specifically about my situation, or monitoring my brand, he gave me some pretty good insight into how they do what they do:

“Our MyReputation search runs the equivalent of thousands of Google Alerts.  For example, we wouldn’t just scan for ‘Jennifer Leggio’ but ‘ J Leggio’ or ‘Jennifer ZDNet’ or ‘mediaphtyr’, etc. And then we’ll extract additional clues from the content we find (for example, maybe we learn the name of a spouse and then add then on to the cluster of recursive searches we are running for you each month),” Tripp said. “Finally, we make sure we go deeper, seeking mentions of your name and personal details on Web sites that Google can’t reach.  For example, we actively search over 40 social networks, most of which are not indexed by the search engines.”

After this experience, I’m putting my money where my mouth is and signing up for the MyReputation service.

ReputationDefender is committed to protecting privacy and identity online and encourages all online users to monitor and protect their digital reputation. Special thanks to Ms. Leggio for bringing this issue to her own security conscious following.

Vivian Song has a well written article in the Toronto Sun that looks at how courts are taking online behavior into account when making rulings and handing down sentences. Quoting from the page:

Be careful what you post on Facebook or MySpace, because anything you say or upload can and will be used against you in a court of law.

Last year, for example, an Ottawa court heard that a civil servant had started a clandestine affair with an old friend she reconnected with through Facebook during a messy custody battle involving three kids.

In a Vancouver courtroom last month, defendants in a personal injury case produced photos from the plaintiff’s Facebook profile showing that while Myla Bagasbas was seeking $40,000 in damages for pain, suffering and loss of enjoyment after a car accident, she was still able to kayak, hike and bike post-accident.

The fluid nature of real world identity is then contrasted with the still somewhat stunted world on online relationships:

While we’re able to compartmentalize and separate people in our lives offline by assigning titles to different spheres — co-workers, neighbours, family — the online world fails to recognize those distinctions.

The article then looks at how employers are relying on Google searches and social networking profiles to screen job applicants in the digital age. ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik is quoted as an expert.

“A resume is no longer what you send to your employer,” said ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik. “More people look at Google as a resume.”

But instead of authenticating information found online, people are trusting secondary material and treating Google like God.

“What happens is in a court of law, you have to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt. On the Internet though, many decisions are based on lower standards,” Fertik said.

But is sanitizing a person’s online reputation of unflattering content an infringement of freedom of speech and freedom of expression?

“Only if you believe Google is the best and most accurate source of information,” Fertik said. “But I don’t think Google is God. I believe Google is a machine.”

ReputationDefender Blog recently covered the second article that Ms. Song wrote for this three part tech series and we are pleased to be mentioned in this final piece, as well.

Vivian Song has a well written piece in the Toronto Sun that spotlights the security and privacy concerns that social networkers face on a daily basis. It mentions Facebook phishing schemes and online identity theft and also looks at how social media terms of service are often at odds with notions of brick and mortar privacy. ReputationDefender gets covered as an industry leader.

Companies such as ReputationDefender will scour the Internet and remove unflattering material that could sully their client’s online reputation. For example, when a grad student discovered a picture of her half-naked body posted by a bitter ex-boyfriend, she enlisted ReputationDefender’s help. The company’s strategy is surprisingly simple: They ask the site host politely. They’re not a legal team, says founder Michael Fertik, but they’ve seldom had to resort to legal methods in the 10,000 removal requests made so far.

ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik is also quoted in the piece:

“People are alive to the fact that the web is not their enemy,” Fertik said from California. “It’s a fact of life and people want to have as much control over it as possible.”

The Toronto paper looks specifically at how Facebook’s terms of service impact Canadian privacy laws and also delineates how social networking is fundamentally altering how we percieve ourselves online and off. As more people connect with one another online, managing and monitoring one’s reputation will be critical.

Online Identity Issues are getting more attention in the Main Stream Media these days. Recently CNN had a discussion about workers being fired for MySpace comments.

What do you think? Is getting fired for online comments fair? Is it something you think about when you are online? Let us know in the comments below.