The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management • Hacker News Board

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#21

Post by jiggy2011 » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 3:09 PM UTC

draugadrotten wrote: post #12

I suffered harm from a negative SEO campaign like this. I was in a relationship with a young woman, whose father is a wealthy CEO of a public company. I will never be able to prove it, but he arranged for my name to be smeared. He ensured that when you google my name, "arrested" showed up in Google instant search. Needless to say, my clients were not thrilled. He also got the local newspaper to carry a story about an…

Wouldn't it make more sense to sue him for libel? I'm quite curious what you did to piss him off so much, the overprotective father is a well established meme but going to such lengths to destroy a person's reputation and livelihood takes it to the next level.

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#22

Post by mpclark » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 3:44 PM UTC

troels wrote: post #18

thu wrote: post #5

Interesting story. I don't want to make any checks, but it seems the story itself could be false; in some way that's even more interesting. E.g. all the sites that are mentionned could exist, but have been created long ago to give this story credits. This also makes me think to all those people that endorse me on linkedin, presumably so that I endorse them back.

Nah, they endorse you by accident, most likely. Linkedin incessantly buggers its users with requests to endorse ones connections. You almost have to make an effort NOT to endorse, if you navigate the site.

"Bugs", surely? Although you may be right...

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#23

Post by gwern » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 4:22 PM UTC

agravier wrote: post #20

draugadrotten wrote: post #12

I suffered harm from a negative SEO campaign like this. I was in a relationship with a young woman, whose father is a wealthy CEO of a public company. I will never be able to prove it, but he arranged for my name to be smeared. He ensured that when you google my name, "arrested" showed up in Google instant search. Needless to say, my clients were not thrilled. He also got the local newspaper to carry a story about an…

> I am slowly gathering a pile of evidence of major tax evasion towards her father and his off-shore accounts on Cyprus, and one day revenge will be mine. Justice I have no hope for. You possibly just blew it.

Heck, if the dude's money really was on Cyprus, revenge may already be his.

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#24

Post by gwern » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 4:27 PM UTC

salimmadjd wrote: post #13

The author should have also added Wikipedia editing and creating as well.

> But when sleuthing through the metadata, I noticed other names thrown in incongruously: Joe Ricketts, Helen Lee Schifter, Irena Briganti, Antonio Weiss, and Luke Weil. I also noticed the same Wikipedia editor, Belkin555, had tidied the entries of several of them.

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#25

Post by shabble » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 4:34 PM UTC

The bit on the last page

"I imagined a future in which rich people create dozens of scapegoats for themselves, like [...] body doubles, and wondered how some data-mining bot might tell the difference."

reminds me of the "Friends of Privacy" in Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge[1]:

"[T]he web browser was much like the ones he remembered, even though many sites couldn't be displayed properly. Google still worked. He searched for Lena Llewelyn Gu. Of course, there was plenty of information about her. Lena had been a medical doctor and rather well known in a limited, humdrum way. And yes, she had died a couple of years ago. The details were a cloud of contradiction, some agreeing with what Bob told him, some not. It was this damn Friends of Privacy. It was hard to imagine such villains, doing their best to undermine what you could find on the net. A "vandal charity" was what they called themselves."

[1] Incidentally, a must-read for anyone wondering about possible implications of Google-Glass-like VR/AR technology.

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#26

Post by JamesArgo » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 4:43 PM UTC

shabble wrote: post #25

The bit on the last page "I imagined a future in which rich people create dozens of scapegoats for themselves, like [...] body doubles, and wondered how some data-mining bot might tell the difference." reminds me of the "Friends of Privacy" in Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge[1]: "[T]he web browser was much like the ones he remembered, even though many sites couldn't be displayed properly. Google still worked. He searche…

It's amazing, reading Vinge, how his writing just keeps getting better and better. Though the "deepness" novels may still be his best, I was surprised by how poetically written, perhaps because a key character was a poet, Rainbow's End was. Vinge really knows where his towel is.

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#27

Post by mahmud » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 5:14 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #23

agravier wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am slowly gathering a pile of evidence of major tax evasion towards her father and his off-shore accounts on Cyprus, and one day revenge will be mine. Justice I have no hope for. You possibly just blew it.

Heck, if the dude's money really was on Cyprus, revenge may already be his.

Unless the guy is a Russian "businessman", then he lost nothing.

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#28

Post by cm2012 » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 6:31 PM UTC

It is much more expensive to bury your search engine results if your name is plastered on major sites, so you can pretty easily protect yourself in a couple of steps.

Never fight a battle you don’t have to. From now on, pick a middle name, real or imaginary. Use this name on your resume, business social media accounts, Facebook, etc.

Use your new full name on all the obvious social networks (Facebook, Linkedin, Google +). Then you get creative - leave reviews for books in your field on Amazon using your new full name, they always kill. Make a quora account with the name. Make a meet-up account with the full name, etc.

This won't make it impossible to smear your search results, but it changes it from a couple $100 in outsourcing to a multi-thousand dollar a year project. Best advantage of this, it costs you almost nothing to change all of this to a new middle name if your enemy does spend the money. Spam anchor text can't be changed without doing the whole campaign again, even if they can change the smear websites, which many times they can't (since its published elsewhere).

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#29

Post by troels » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 6:49 PM UTC

draugadrotten wrote: post #12

I suffered harm from a negative SEO campaign like this. I was in a relationship with a young woman, whose father is a wealthy CEO of a public company. I will never be able to prove it, but he arranged for my name to be smeared. He ensured that when you google my name, "arrested" showed up in Google instant search. Needless to say, my clients were not thrilled. He also got the local newspaper to carry a story about an…

I don't know anything about you, so what you say could be true, but the way you present it makes you sound rather delusional.

Re: The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

#30

Post by troels » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 6:58 PM UTC

mpclark wrote: post #22

troels wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, they endorse you by accident, most likely. Linkedin incessantly buggers its users with requests to endorse ones connections. You almost have to make an effort NOT to endorse, if you navigate the site.

"Bugs", surely? Although you may be right...

Curious. I'm not a native speaker, but I thought "bugger" could be used in that way. Not so?