The Handmaiden of Tragic Rebounds offers her advice.

Miss Meghan Asha chirps up today, with a helpful post on how to protect your reputation online (you know, because she's "your source for tech"):

URL4U

Do you have dirt on the web? The Internet has become a place where attackers have an advantage with the ability to taint your reputation. With recruiters, college admissions offices, acquaintances, and even potential dates searching for your name on the Internet, wouldn’t it be nice if you could erase some of your web persona mishaps?

Is this a dig at us, Meghan?

A little over a year ago, my Google search was completely clear without a blemish. You could barely find my name, except for being on the Dean’s list in college. Now, it seems you can find more posts, articles, and comments on everything from who I’ve dated to what words I’ve misspelled (gotta love a lifecast!). I’m not complaining, but I would be, if I was working in an environment where all theses little details could
deter me from getting a promotion.

Meghan, it's a good thing you're not complaining. The problem with complaining would be that a lot of what you and the rest of the Trio would object to is sort of a direct result of what you "put out there." But Meghan has a helpful suggestion--an endorsement, if you will, for those who might suffer from some of the problems she does:

I know that most people are not so hip to broadcast their life on the Internet, so for those of you looking to scrub the interwebs and clear your name, I suggest you visit Reputation Defender. I’m stunned that there’s actually an answer to clearing those smarmy search results, here a little description of what Reputation Defender offers:

* To SEARCH out all information about you and your family throughout the Internet and present it to you in a clear, easy-to-understand fashion
* To provide DESTROY assistance, helping to remove, at your request, inaccurate, inappropriate, hurtful, and slanderous information about you and your family using our proprietary in-house methodology. This same mission extends to your personally identifiable information, like name, address, and phone number.
* To deliver CONTROL over how others are able to perceive you on the Internet

They offer four different products to combat online slander for you and your loved ones: (Ed note: Much is lifted from from RD's web site, though Meghan adds her own special touches.)

• MyReputation: Allows you to review everything about you online. Best part is that not only reviews the open Internet, but also the ‘Invisible Web’. Yes, there is an ‘Invisible Web’; I’ll post on this phenomenon later.
• MyChild: Scours the Internet for all references to your child and teen.
• MyEdge: Allows you to own your search engine results and control you’re [sic] online reputation.
• My Privacy: Let’s you remove all your personal information from people search databases- from one dashboard.

• 
  

See, now here's why we're disappointed, Megs. A true tech journalist, even "just" a tech blogger, would provide a little bit more service when writing about such companies. Maybe they'd answer these questions: Does it really work? What are the company's methods? What do outside experts think? They wouldn't just cut and paste from the company's web site and shill the product for them.

If you'd done any research or reporting, you might share some of what this WSJ article does. You know, information on the company's methods, fee structure and even pitfalls:

But, as Ms. Parascandola found out, the services can't wipe everything off the Internet, and their efforts can backfire. ReputationDefender sent a letter to political blog Positive Liberty asking it to remove Ms. Parascandola's name from a critical entry on the grounds the post was "outdated and invasive." Blogger Jason Kuznicki refused, and posted a new entry mocking the request. He says he "had a good laugh over it."

Michael Fertik, a 28-year-old Harvard Law graduate who founded ReputationDefender in October, said misfires represent a "tiny percentage" of the company's efforts to fight the "permanent and public" nature of negative online content. For fees starting at $10 a month, the 10-person Louisville, Ky.-based company scours blogs, photo-sharing sites and social networks for information about a client, then charges $30 for each item the user instructs it to try to correct or remove. The service won't say how many customers it has...He declined to say how many times ReputationDefender has succeeded in having content removed.

Well, that's good to know! The article also explains the company's methodology:

ReputationDefender begins by sending emails on behalf of its clients to Web-site owners. The letters typically introduce the company, identify the client and the offending content, and ask the recipient to remove it. The letters don't make threats -- Mr. Fertik, despite his training, and others at ReputationDefender aren't lawyers -- but instead try to appeal to recipients' sense of fairness: "Like our clients, and perhaps like you, we think the Internet is sometimes unnecessarily hurtful to the privacy and reputations of everyday people," one such letter reads.

And sometimes the company's methods can backfire!

While Mr. Fertik said such problems are rare, takedown attempts that go awry can generate considerable unwanted attention. Stuart Neilson, a statistics instructor at a university in Cork, Ireland, claimed on his personal Web site that he was the victim of "academic bullying" by a colleague. After the other professor hired ReputationDefender to try to have the accusations removed, Dr. Neilson rebuffed the firm and posted his exchanges with the company on his site. Those posts received wider attention when they were republished on a blog devoted to faculty discord in academia. "It has merely generated additional publicity," he said.

ReputationDefender also sent a takedown request to Consumerist, a Gawker Media blog that had written about a man who was briefly jailed for harassment after repeatedly calling online travel agent Priceline.com Inc. for a refund. The letter asked the blog to remove or alter the archived post, saying it was "outdated and disturbing" to its client. Consumerist editor Ben Popken blasted the request with a profanely titled entry, calling it an attempt at censorship. "It's not like we're spreading libel," he said. "They were trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube."

ReputationDefender's Mr. Fertik said the company is no longer sending letters to irreverent blogs like Consumerist, which may be more likely to mock the company's efforts. "We are no longer taking those kinds of risks with those kinds of outlets," he said.

Uh, then what is the point? Oh, but there's another way to bury negative information--just bombard the web with positive stuff!

DefendMyName, a two-year-old unit of Portland, Maine-based marketing firm QED Media Group LLC, markets itself as a way to remove negative mentions from search-engine results. What it actually does, said founder Rob Russo, is attempt to bury them below promotional sites, blogs and forum postings it creates for clients. The company's rates start at $1,000 a month, he said, though he declined to say how many clients it has.

We've read that ReputationDefender employs similar methodology, as this Forbes article reports:

But Reputation Defender recently began offering users a subtler approach: hiding unwanted Web comments with a barrage of positive, Google-friendly content, either created by the company or dredged up from elsewhere on the Web and optimized to appear at the top of search-engine results.

"Say you have 20,000 delighted clients and five clients that hate you," says Fertik. "We'll tell your story on the Internet and find press about you and start promoting that to the top of the Google chain. It's very Internet-specific PR, a very different game." For that labor-intensive service, officially called MyEdge, the company charges a hefty price: Fees start at around $10,000. Fertik says he has more than 25 clients for the service.

MyEdge's success is based not only in creating reputation-boosting pages but also in convincing Google to float those sites to the first few pages of results, the only results that most Web users ever see. But gaming Google can be tricky. The search giant, which declined to comment on Reputation Defender's service, spends significant resources trying to prevent Web site owners from pushing up their ranking artificially. And it will punish sites it thinks are cheating by pushing them into the back pages of search results. (see "Condemned To Google Hell").

When it's all said and done, ReputationDefender's services seem like a lot of money for stuff you could do yourself. But Meghan, the renowned "expert" tech blogger seems to disagree:

What do you think? Is privacy and protecting your Internet persona worth $15 a month?

My answer is YES! What’s yours?

Email Meghan@NonSociety.com

And that's the kind of service you get from NonSociety.

If only we got paid for this...

...there would be a new definition of job security.

Oh, sweet bunnies. It's only been about 14 hours since our last post, and yet, so much has happened. First, the Handmaiden of Passive Aggression got a haircut:



































And THEN she showed it off to the rest of the Trio, of which JAB couldn't resist sharing some of her world-class witty conversation:


* Mary: I'm not like spiky hair crazy girl.
* Me: You are now!
* Mary: I look like a dyke from the back.
* Me: This is true. But a hot one.


Oh, but bunnies! Julia then consulted her BloggingLifecasting for Dummies handbook and realized that perhaps she does not want to offend the Gays (even the lady ones). So she amended it:

* Mary: I'm not like spiky hair crazy girl.
* Me: You are now!


And then, while we were asleep, Our Lady of Introspection, true to her name, decided that it was an important time to give back to the world. You know, *do* something. She writes (Feb 3 - 2:14am):

Do something

I’ve always been a huge advocate for animal rights - in high school, I was president of the Animal Protection Club, I volunteered and sent part of my allowance to a no-kill cat shelter. (It’s also the reason I don’t eat meat.)

But I’ll be honest - I haven’t done much with the cause since I graduated from college. I’ve donated a few times, but nothing more than that. I don’t know why that is, exactly. I wonder if it’s something that happens to a lot of young people when they leave school and enter into the work world: career survival mode kicks in and they put blinders on.

Perhaps that’s what’s happened to me.

Perhaps, Jules. Because you speak for all "young people" and you know exactly how much they give back in their 20s.

Anyway, Julia wasn't completely oblivious to fighting the good fight in her post-college youth:

Two years ago, I tried to start a charity that delivered “gently-read” magazines to women’s shelters. My thinking was this: I had subscriptions to about 14 publications, which I would read, then stack in the hallway for recycling (or, in the case of The New Yorker, look at the cover, then stack in the hallway for recycling). On more than one occasion, as I was lugging the 27 pounds of perfect good escapism, I thought, “I really wish this were going somewhere useful.”

To me, that was battered women’s shelters - a place where, more than anything - you just want to get your mind off your own life for an hour. (Despite this whole “internet” thing, magazines are still pretty good at doing that.) Anyway, my idea was to set up boxes at the bottom of Manhattan apartment buildings, so that people could leave once-read periodicals at their convenience. Then, every week, we’d pick them up and drop them at the interested shelters.

Great plan. Except … when we called the shelters, they weren’t as interested as I had expected. And I didn’t even have money to pay for rent (at the time), let alone fund and organize a start-up charity.

Out of all the things you could have done, Jules, in your pretty, privileged existence, this is what you came up with? Maybe you should stick to dropping off used magazines at the gym. Or Mary's gym. Hell, I suppose just recycling them is a big step for you.

Anyway, she continues:

I’ll be honest - I still don’t have the money. Not even close. But I can do something, and that’s start a conversation here.

Hold on, Jules. We don't know much about your financial situation, other than the fact that it's widely reported that Star paid you six figures to be its talking head. But listen, sweetie. You're flying around the world (business class, as you made sure to make it clear; that is, when you're not on other people's private jets), spending $300 a pop to rent designer dresses (or did you get that for free?) and milking whoever you can for free goods. Maybe the money you're spending on your little business endeavor could be used for a better cause. One question: How much of your future "Fuck You" money will you allocate to charitable expenses?

While in Davos, I had the pleasure of meeting Nancy Lublin, the founder of Dress for Success and the CEO of Do Something!, a charity aimed at increasing teenage activism. I’ve asked her to be a guest on the TMIweekly episode we’re taping about women’s charities on February 10th, and hopefully her schedule will allow it.

In the meantime, I want to start doing little things - and I DON’T mean attending Charity Galas. Those have always struck me as … well, you know, I was about to say “disingenuous,” but who am I to say how organizations should raise their capital? I just want to do something more personal.

I guess it takes one to know one.

So - how is it you give back to the world? Especially when you’re in the Career Survival Mode and you can’t write a check?

Email Julia@NonSociety.com

Quite the Mother Teresa, she is. Inspirational.

Anyway, moving on. Then we learn, bunnies, that JAB's tweet about the inappropriate crush (see post below) has been deleted. Scandalous!

And finally, new intern Lisa lays down the law over at the QOD:

QOD Commenting Policy:

1. All responses that pertain to the question at hand will remain.

2. Answer the QOD as if you are writing to someone you respect (your mother, maybe?).

3. If you have any CONSTRUCTIVE criticism for Nonsociety, then congratulate yourself by repeating this phrase four times: "I am smart and wonderful".

Good Luck!

Lisa
P.S. The deletion machanism is buggy, please be patient.

Wait, so does that mean that constructive criticism is allowed, or that only then may we congratulate ourselves for it? You need to be more clear, Miss L.

Ah, and there's an addendum:

I forgot to add...

If you do not have anything nice to say, please do not visit this site! These ladies have hundreds of thousands of fans and do not need the page views from haters anyways. So go F yourself haters!!!

Wow, another intern schooled in the Mary Rambin methods of page-view analysis and reader-relationship-building. How refreshing. Anyway, we tend to agree, Haters. Leave your comments here!

Inappropriate, indeed.

Jesus, we take a break to do some work and get some dinner, and all hell breaks loose in the NonSociety world.

Sorry we haven't been reblogging diligently, bunnies. If we had, we would have captured all those posts Julia Allison Baugher and company have deleted. You know, the ones with all these pictures of the private jet from Switzerland back to the States?











































































Anyway, bunnies, thanks to Gawker, we learn that the plane belongs to a one 47-year-old Dan Loeb, hedge fund manager, yoga nut and NS ass-kisser extraordinaire. Turns out, Mr. Loeb is married, though, to a former yoga teacher named Margaret Munzer.

Now, we're not ones to draw crazy conclusions, but could sweet Julia's yoga-esque posing this morning (see below) and her recent Twitter about having "the most mind-boggling crush on someone totally inappropriate right now. Shit!" have to do with Mr. Loeb's generosities? I guess we'll never know.

Uh oh.

UPDATE: Oh no, there's a new sheriff in town. Lisa, the new intern, writes over on the QOD:

Deleting comments will resume tomorrow. I am just learning how to do it with the programmer now.

Read this as a warning! I'm a tough one.

Lisa

P.S. I do not have an innapropriate (sic) blog about my work with Nonsociety.

Oh, we see. So Charlsie's blog was "inappropriate" (we fixed the spelling for you, sweetie)? Hmm, this does not bode well for Charlsie getting that signature. And Lisa? Willingly walking into this mess will get you nowhere. We had some patience for naivete, but now you're just being dumb.

*

Is Charlsie not going to get credit for the hours she spent requesting free products for Our Lady of Introspection? We hope not:

I just want my J-Term form to be mailed back on time to my college. And I want it to reflect my work for the entire month, not what I wrote (which was all the truth) on my blog which pissed certain people off.

Is Miss JAB cruel enough to withold the necessary signature just because she's pissed we now know she shows up two and a half hours late for meetings? Really, Jules, that would be a new low.

OK, here you go.

OK, Paul, you win. Here's one of the Haters, coming out:


Remarks on NonSociety from rachael on Vimeo.

It doesn't make much difference though...anon or not, it's the substance that matters.

So, Haters. Tell us below your own reasons for thinking that JAB and company are like the Emperor without any clothes. Think of this as a compendium. Thanks, Rachael, for starting the conversation.