Your Reputation is all You’ve Got

As I’ve written about previously, I’ve been a victim of identity theft, and it was a nightmare.  To this day the police have not pursued the perpetrator, even with an obvious paper trail, including the home address and phone number of the perp!  It goes to show you that you are on your own when it comes to protecting your personal information.  Perhaps even worse than having your identity stolen is having it maligned.  To prevent this, there are a number of products that can help you monitor and control how your personal information as it appears online.

Reputation.com is a package of services from AOL Fulfillment Services that uses sophisticated tools to scour the Internet to find what’s being posted online about you.  It can find and wipe clean unwanted personal information about you, and it can even eliminate your unwanted direct mail, with up to 90 percent effectiveness.  With the ReputationDiscover and My Privacy Bundle products, an automatic request to remove unwanted online material about you is sent to the offending site.

With the myriad of social networking sites and other places that your name, photos, and other personal information can be posted, it pays to be vigilant to protect your reputation.