Google-Cide! Online reputation management

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EXCLUSIVE Google-Cide! Online reputation
management Why consumers, the media, government
agencies and search engines should take action
against them
Free Powerpoint Templates
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Worried about your online reputation? Watch out
The fix could be worse than the problem. Online
reputation management (ORM) has become a
burgeoning business as individuals and companies
alike seek ways to hide negative or damaging
statements about them from the Web. But let the
buyer beware The company that helps protect your
reputation may have its own reputation issues.
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Consider the case of Darren Meade Darren Meade,
who in 2010 was working as interim CEO at a
California-based company. In an effort to address
a number of negative comments (about both himself
and his company) posted online, his company hired
Rexxfield an ORM, also based in California.
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But Meade said he became increasingly concerned
about the relationship with Rexxfield when he
discovered the company wanted to sell illegal
hacker code to scrub negative comments from the
web -- and planned a marketing campaign of fear
based on the threat that it can wipe anyone
offline.
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They called it Googlecide, Meade, now an
entrepreneur, told FoxNews.com. ORM companies
normally monitor search results from engines like
Google or Bing and try to push down negative
pages about their clients, so theyre seen by
fewer people.Common techniques are heavy
promotion of positive content or formal requests
that websites take down negative or libelous
content.
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But Meade said Rexxfield owner and operater
Michael Roberts was preparing to purchase a
coding hack he called injection source code
that lets the user manipulate the metadata behind
a website, adding a noindex" tag that drops the
results on search engines like Google and Bing --
hiding them completely. Contract between
Rexxfield and hack creator Matthew Cooke
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Meade said Roberts showed him the code injectors
effectiveness by hacking into Ripoff Report, a
complaint board site. He told me, watch what
happens -- and sure enough, the results
dropped, Meade told FoxNews.com. They were able
to edit out anyone. Roberts has denied those
charges, and told FoxNews.com he merely took
notes when someone tried to sell the illegal code
to him on a conference call. He insisted he never
planned to buy it.
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He is lying, Roberts said of Meade In an
audiotape obtained by FoxNews.com of a meeting
that included Roberts, Meade and others, those
present are heard discussing a public relations
fear campaign that would help them sell their
services to worried parents.
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I would love to run an underground campaign that
says, Google is trying to destroy your
reputation, an executive on the call is heard
saying. I like the idea of, the more popular
you are, the more dangerous it is, and giving
people the scare tactic of, the more exposure
you have the faster it is for your enemies to
attack you. I think theres a whole other
campaign where we can break the parents, the
executive continued. Send them a picture of
their kid with a gun in his mouth -- Google did
it. Little Johnny is going to commit
Google-cide. Can you stop it?
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Audiotape of marketing meeting between Roberts,
Meade and others Whatever the marketing
techniques involved, the use of injection source
code to promote such techniques is patently
illegal, said Ira Victor, a forensics expert with
Nevada-based Data Clone Labs, referring to the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 USC 1030).
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You cannot use this technique without breaking
the law, Victor told FoxNews.com. It most
certainly raises the level of computer fraud and
abuse. To add the noindex tag, he said,
you would need to break into a website ... but
if they can break into a server, whats to stop
them from just deleting all the data? Many
sites, like Ripoff Report, lack the proper
security methods to prevent the injection source
code technique, Victor said.
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There are a tremendous amount of websites that
are on the Internet with a tremendous amount of
vulnerabilities, he said. It can be as simple
as changing around a few letters in the
URL. And that, says Jason Stern, a New
York-based attorney who specializes in Internet
issues, is against the law. "You can't inject
code into anyone's system without their
knowledge," Stern said. "It constitutes
trespassing.
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If you leave your car unlocked, it doesn't mean I
can take your car. The law is the same for a
website, even if there is weak security. A
statute in California penal law, he said, further
states that no one is allowed to transmit,
destroy or alter another person's website without
their knowledge. Sources told Foxnews.com the
case caught the attention of the attorney
generals office in Arizona, where RipoffReport
is based.
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A spokesman at the attorney generals office told
FoxNews.com it could not comment on whether or
not there is an ongoing investigation. Roberts,
Meade and others have also said the code injector
can be used to access the metadata on sites like
Blogger, Yahoo, Bing and even Google. Sources at
Google told FoxNews.com that developers at the
site have not encountered any issues from such
hacks. The search giant takes a strong stance
against online reputation management in general.
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"While there is nothing in our guidelines that
explicitly forbids reputation management, if we
uncover link schemes or other violations, we
reserve the right to take action in response," a
Google spokeswoman told FoxNews.com. UPDATE
Meade said once he discovered the technology
was hacking and what its implications were, he
made it his mission to warn the public about the
dangers this technology poses to free speech.
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He also understood the institutionalized
repertoire of serial defamation, vexatious
litigation, and death threats have all be leveled
against him in a futile attempt to force him to
retreat from his stated goal. Meade also stated
that Ripoff Report has reversed the hack and is
now the only completely secure site impenetrable
to hacker code that he is aware of. What else
has been deleted from the internet outside of
Ripoff Report that has never been restored? What
is being censored from us in the search engines
we use every day?
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Those seeking more information may visit
http//www.ripoffreport.com/organized-crime/goog
le-cide-exposed/google-cide-exposed-by-the-man-01c
d6.htm