Googling Me, Googling You. Ah-ha
Online privacy and reputation is going to be big business over the next few years. The last couple of weeks have seen the beta launch of both London’s Garlik and US-based Reputation Defender. Both of these subscription services offer to scour the web for you, find every trace of your name and optionally attempt to delete it by contacting the service providers responsible for its storage. (Reputation Defender also offers a service allowing you to spy on your child, which is another matter entirely).
According to a study by counsellors at Purdue University, “1/3 of employers screen job candidates using search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. 11.5 percent look through social-networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga for the profiles of job candidates.” This practice is only going to increase as employers become more aware of how much information can actually be obtained online. As digital natives move from trainsurfing to applying for accountancy degrees, the detritus of their online past could become quite harmful.
But thoroughly respectable adults also have reason to be concerned. Garlik’s co-founder Tom Ilube told me of his surprise at finding floorplans of his house on his local council’s website following an application for permission to build an extension. Nothing to hide there, but do you really want that sort of thing to be in the public domain without your permission? According to Ilube, the time is right for a mass-market privacy service as the general public start to become aware of just how much data about them is being stored online. The growing problem of identity theft - more than 100,000 britons were affected last year according to Garlik, at a cost of £1.7bn - is also addressed by the service.
It will be interesting to see how successful they are at actually delivering what they promise. After reading of people’s difficulties in simply having negative or incorrect Wikipedia profiles deleted, I have to be a little sceptical.
