Category Reputation Management

Summary: Nude images plague today’s Internet space. The problem is, most of the images are posted without consent.

If you’re one of the many victims of what’s known as revenge porn, not all hope is lost. For years, people have dealt with the emotional stress of having their nude photos leaked across the Internet. Worst of all, there was simply nothing they could do about it. Don’t fret, this guide is designed to help minimize the damages that your ex has caused.

Make Contact With the Website Owner

If you know the specific domain that your pictures were leaked to, be sure and try to make contact with the owner of the site. But, let’s be realistic, these individuals are in it for the views and the clicks. They could care less about your privacy and the emotional impact that it’s caused to you. Still, it never hurts to try. Be upfront and firm, but also be sure that you maintain a high degree of self esteem as well.

Work To Get it Removed from Search Engines

If you haven’t done so already, file a DMCA takedown notice to the offending website or to the Internet Service Provider. DMCA is short for Digital Millenium Copyright Act and is comprised of a group of laws that protect against copyrighted content on a digital medium. If your picture is stolen and placed on the website without your consent, there is a chance that you can get it removed from the search engines by contacting a DMCA agent and providing the specifics of your case. Note that you need to follow the instruction of the agent and provide them with all the necessary details that he or she requires.

Look to Hire a Reputation Management Firm

Reputation management firms, like Reputation Stars, work to minimize the visibility of the images. By using tactics like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media, these companies take control of the situation by making it much more difficult to locate the nude images. If the photos can’t be found, fewer people will even notice it exists, giving victims back their dignity and self-esteem.

Summary: Handling your online reputation can rapidly minimize monetary impact.

Proactively managing the reputation of your brand should always be at the forefront of your PR campaign. You would be missing out on maximizing your profitability and ROI by neglecting this aspect. Here are 5 important reputation management tips that you can use to boost your online reputation management efforts.

1. Social Media is More Powerful Than You Think
   

If you aren’t already aware, Google now allows Tweets to appear in the search results. This means social media can play a much more impactful role when it comes to your reputation. News media are always on the hunt for social media posts that are worthy of writing columns. What you say on these platforms can have a profound effect on your company, reputation, and profitability. Choose your words carefully.

2. Celebrate Customer Appreciation
   

Positive experiences don’t need to stay with the customer, have them voice their opinion. Gently request a review by asking them to share their experience with you. Most customers are quick to write negative reviews and bash companies left and right, but many don’t think twice about voicing their appreciation.

3. Develop Appropriate Content
   

While social media is king, so to speak, you may also need to build out social materials for more than just your company itself. If you have products outside your company name, it’s highly recommended that you develop content to rank for those names on the search engines. Remember, the more visibility that you have, the greater the chance that you bring in leads.

4. Reconcile When In the Wrong
   

If your company messes up or does something wrong don’t be ashamed to own up to your mistakes. After all, these things do happen on occasion, and a genuine apology can go a long way. Maintain transparency with the situation and be real with the affected client. Diffusing a situation and reconciling can potentially minimize the damages.

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Invest
   

Frugality won’t help develop your online reputation. Many small businesses ignore the fundamentals of reputation management or do it on their own time, which almost never works in their favor. Maintaining your social media and proactively handling your reputation management is a vital element to success. If you don’t have experience with this, it’s recommended that you interact with the various online resources or even go as far as to hire a team such as Reputation Stars to handle the dirty work for you.

We often get asked if it is possible to delete complaints on Ripoff Report completely.  The answer is yes, but is not easy and often it is not cheap. In this post we will explain a few ways you can get rid of Ripoff Report, some of these methods would not remove the report but may help you in making your reputation better.

• Court Ordered Removals:
  This is the only way a report may be completely removed. Basically you need to file a lawsuit against the poster and win. If the poster is not known, then you file a John Doe lawsuit and may get a default judgment. You then request a court ordered removal from the judge and present it to Ripoff Report. Ripoff Report may or may not remove it. They are more likely to remove it if you actually fought someone and won. If they fail to remove, then you present the judgment to Google, Bing and Yahoo and they are more likely to honor it and remove, so at minimum you may get the report deleted from the search engines, but not RipoffReport itself.  It can be expensive because most often attorneys need to do it. This is a service that we offer, but we do not charge as much as attorneys do, because we do not use attorneys. We even would guarantee at least removal from Google or you would not pay.  If interested, please contact us for details.

• SEO Push Down
  Using SEO techniques you can push down the report to second or 3rd page of Google search results so it is less visible in searches for your name or brand. This may also involve creation of mini sites, many social profiles, videos and writing many articles. This method is used by majority of reputation management companies.  This method could also be expensive because Ripoff Report is a pretty powerful site and you have to do lot’s of SEO efforts to succeed in pushing it down. One benefit of this method is that if you get posted again in the future, most likely the post would not show up high. However, if you use the court ordered removal and another post shows up, then you have to do the removal again, which would cost you more money.

• Cyber bullying or Harassment Removals
  Ripoff Report claims that they would redact information in cases of Cyber Bullying or online Harassment.  In fact, we have been successful in using this method for a client. You still need to make a good argument, so we recommend using us to do it, rather than trying it yourself.  This method would work for a very few people, maybe less than 1%. However, if you try to do it yourself, then it would cost you nothing. To try yourself send an email to the owner Ed Magdeson at editor@ripoffreport.com.

• Copyright Removals (aka DMCA Removals)
  DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was a law created in the 90’s to fight online copyright issues. If the post contains any copyright of yourself, such as if the poster has used your photo or content from your website, you may be able to file a DMCA request to have it removed. The DMCA may also be used to remove content if your personal info is posted such as your social security number, bank info, or other personal info.   If you send a DMCA to Ripoff Report, most likely they will just redact the content in question, but would not remove the whole post. Therefore, it is our recommendation to send it direct to Google. However, in 99% of the cases Google will tell you to send it to the site direct. You may have a small chance that Google may accept your request. This could be because Google may have tens of staff members viewing these requests and something may fall through cracks or the reviewer at Google may be having a good day and side with you.In the past few years, many people and/or reputation management companies have also tried to game the system and filed what is called Fake DMCA orders.  The way it works is that first you post a copyrighted content in the comments or rebuttal section of Ripoff Report and then you file a DMCA take down notice with Google claiming someone has copied your content.  Some people would use fake contact info and claim ownership of the content, even tough they were not the rightful owners. This is why it’s called a Fake DMCA order.This method worked for a while, but then Google caught on to it and started declining them. It is against the law to file fake DMCA’s so we do not recommend it. Although, it is highly unlikely that anyone would get in trouble for it, so that is why many got away doing it. You can see evidence of this happening if you search past DMCA removal requests at lumendatabase.org.In summary, this method does not work anymore, so do not even try it. The only time you may want to try it is if you really have your copyrighted content stolen and posted on RipoffReport.

• Ripoff Report’s VIP Arbitration Program
  Ripoff Report is offering an arbitration program to try and redact false info.  We have heard different numbers as far as what it costs. It could be as low as $2000 and as high as $10,000 per post. Basically, they will use an independent arbitrator to look at evidence provided by you and also by the poster and then make a decision if the report is false. If they decide in your favor, they will remove or redact certain parts of the report, but they will not remove your name or brand name from the post.  Hence, the post would still show up in Google search results, which is not a good thing.There are two huge cons with this method. A) It would only work if the post is untrue or fake and the poster does not respond or provide any evidence. B) The post remains on the site, so it still shows up in Google search results, hence anyone searching in Google for your company name will see it and that in itself is bad, because most people may associate a listing at RipoffReport to be negative and would move on without even reading the report.

If you have a negative review on Ripoff Report and need help with deletion or push down, contact us today to see what we can do for you.

Our CEO Pierre Zarokian and attorney Aaron Minc from Dinn, Hochman & Potter, LLC will be doing a free online webinar on July 19, 2016 at 2:30pm EST.

Pierre Zarokian will discuss Yelp and general reputation management, including:

– Why Yelp is so important!
– Yelp Filter : How it works and how to beat it
– Methods to get negative reviews removed on Yelp
– Ways to increase positive reviews on Yelp
– Discussion of other review sites and how they work, including: Google+, Ripoff Report, BBB and others.
– How to do proactive reputation management
– What to do if you get negative reviews on complaint sites such as Ripoff Report, including SEO push down, Copyright removals and other methods

Aaron Minc will discuss legal issues surrounding reputation management, including:

– Why Your Online Reputation Matters
– The New Age of the Internet & The Online Defamation Problem
– The Communications Decency Act
– How to Remove Online Content
– Court Ordered Search Engine Removals
– Online Reputation Management Myths
– What Can I Do To Proactively Protect Your Online Brand

Everyday, thousands of people all over the world wake up to the realization that nude pictures of themselves have appeared online. It could be that you were the victim of a targeted attack, or just a vengeful ex looking to get back at you. Whatever the case, these pictures can be damming to your career prospects, your future relationships and your life. If you, or someone you know, has had this horrible thing happen then you’ll be pleased to know that Google can help remove some of that content from search.

Google has a public policy that acknowledges the terrible truth: sometimes, vengeful people do awful things. One widespread method is to post naked pictures of that person online. These compromising pictures are often shared consensually, and they are taken under the knowledge that they will be kept private.

Google has laid out certain requirements it uses to determine if your content fits this profile:

• The subject of the photo or video, and the person making the request, must be nude or shown in a compromising sexual act.
• The content must be intended for a private audience, such as sharing between spouses.
• If the second condition is true, it follows that the subject never consented to making this information publicly available.

As long as you can prove that your content meets these conditions, Google should help you take this content off of search. It’s important to note that this only applies to Google search. Google will also display a notice that certain content was removed from the search results. The content still exists on whatever website is hosting it, which can creep up in other ways.

What if your next potential employer or spouse uses a different search engine to find information about you? What if this person is tipped off that your videos or photos exist? For these reasons, reputation management is a route you might want to look into. Reputation management offers long term solutions to these types of problems, including complete removal of your compromised content.

In the past few months we have seen Ripoff Report remove several posts from their site and change the titles to:

“(((NAME(S) REDACTED DUE TO PERCEIVED HARASSMENT / CYBERSTALKING / CYBERBULLYING / REVENGE POST)))”

Here are some examples:

Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

As you will see the names and info of the victims have been replaced by words “REDACTED.”

So it appears that they would remove some posts if they are considered to be harassment, cyber stalking, cyber bullying or revenge posts!

We had some doubts whether RipoffReport did this to make it look like they are the good guys and actually care or whether they were paid removals.

We decided to try it for a client by contacting them. One of our clients was a perfect candidate for this service, because they had purchased something from a business and the item was not delivered on time for their event as promised, so our client had left a negative review for the business. The business owner in return retaliated and posted a negative report for our client. Therefore, it could be considered a revenge post.

It took several months from the first time we contacted RipoffReport about this, but we finally checked the page and noticed they had redacted our client’s name.

One word of advice… Mr. Ed Magdeson can be a tough to deal with. If you try to call him on the phone to request this, he may even hang up on you. If you piss him off, you will ruin your chances of redaction! Do not try this yourself and let a professional like us handle it. If you are listed on Ripoff Report, contact us to see if we can help you!

The hack of Ashley Madison just became real for potentially millions of users. The website that billed itself as the premier destination for adult affairs appears to have failed in its aims to provide a discreet locale for its users to meet. A new leak nearly 10 gigabytes in size has unleashed a potential firestorm. If you think your information was in that leak, we won’t judge you but you need to read this.

Search for Your Email Address

You should begin by performing a Google search for your email address, and be sure you go through all of them. Dormant accounts are the best for hacking because the owner often doesn’t know the hack occurred because the email is never checked. This could potentially cause major problems for people who didn’t even know Ashley Madison existed.

You should also use a website like Trustify, which has created a form that checks your email address against the data released in a hack.

Search Your Name

The next avenue is to search for your name. Ashley Madison doesn’t use a process to verify a user’s email account, so it’s entirely possible someone with a negative opinion of you used your credentials to create an account under your name. Your email address might not show up on any related websites, but finding your name in these leaks can still cause trouble. What if your spouse saw your name, or your boss?

A few Links to Check
Here is a forum that released much of the data, but thankfully they would remove your info if you ask:
http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/read/2/1952412.html

This site below let’s you search by an email address to see if your data was part of the hack:
https://ashley.cynic.al/

This site below let’s you check your own email and will send a verification email:
http://www.trustify.info/check

Taking Action

It’s not easy to request removal from some of these websites, as they are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and may refuse to remove a post once it has been made. In these situations, your only alternative is to proactively manage your reputation online. Only reputation management companies can effectively monitor every search engine for references about you.

For more details on the hacking, including a message from the hackers, click here.

Today we discovered that RipoffReport.com has been completely deindexed by Google.  We have searched online for any news about this and so far there is only one other person reporting on this news on Twitter. We have confirmed we several others that are seeing the same thing.

When you search for “Site:ripoffreport.com” no pages from Ripoffreport are showing.  There is however a message stating:
“In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org.”

This could been there is some kind of copyright infringement notice against them. However, what does not make sense is why is the whole website gone and not only the pages that infringe upon someone’s copyright!

Back in 2001, a similar thing happened. Search Engine Watch reported on it and it turned out the Ripoff Report webmaster had accidentally gotten the site deindexed using Webmaster Tools.

We think this removal is temporary, but let’s hope it is gone forever as it will make a lot of people happy!

UPDATE!
The outage only lasted a couple of hours. The pages are all back in Google now! We may never know what happened!

From October 5-8, Las Vegas will be taken over by Pubcon. The gathering is one of the largest annual meetings of search marketing professionals, and discussions will delve deep into all manner of organic search topics. Joining these brilliant minds in search is the veteran SEO and social media marketer: Pierre Zarokian.

Zarokian, who is CEO of Reputation Stars and Submit Express, is an expert on the art of reputation management. Through Reputation Stars, Pierre is successfully growing the reputation management arm of his successful search marketing business. He has developed a proprietary approach that can remove negative reviews and press from Google search results.

“One of the key aspects we look at is Yelp,” says Zarokian, “if a business has a bad Yelp profile, they may lose a lot of business.” Zarokian will discuss the effects that a bad Yelp reputation can have on a growing business, and he will focus on some key takeaways businesses can use to increase positive Yelp reviews.

“Yelp is all over the Web, so there is a good chance it’s the first thing someone sees when they search for local businesses,” says Pierre Zarokian. “Often, the user will bypass Google entirely and go to Yelp to search for businesses in their area.”

Starting at 3:55 on Tuesday, October 6th, Pierre will be joined by other colleagues in the search marketing industry in a roundtable discussion on reputation management. If you attend Pubcon, and you want to grow your business, this session promises insight into one of the next frontiers in search marketing.

If you are interested in attending Pubcon, here is a coupon code that will give you 15% discount: rc-1943915

We have just released a press release titled “Reputation Stars Offers Unique Solutions for Reputation Management.”

In summary, Reputation Stars works with a legal team to try and get most negative reviews removed.  These legal methods often work much better than traditional SEO methods and result in complete removal of the report from the offending site or Google.  Reputation Stars, will use traditional SEO method if the legal method is not an option or if it fails.

Reputation Stars management have 18 years of experience in SEO and online marketing services.  “I got into the reputation management industry because I figured out unique, proprietary ways to help people through their reputation crises,” said Pierre Zarokian, CEO of Reputation Stars.

You can see the full release at:

http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/15/03/p5361249/reputation-stars-offers-unique-solutions-for-reputation-management