If you’ve been spending any time online over the past year, then you’ve undoubtedly noticed a disturbing trend.  With the ubiquity of social networking, people are less likely to be concerned with what information they expose online.  They have the illusion that they are sharing information with a select group of friends, and that gives them a level of comfort that is unwarranted.  In the past few years, it has been fairly common to hear in the news about people losing jobs/relationships/reputations over things that they (or others) post about themselves online.

As can be expected, there are elements out there that have found a way to monetize this lack of caution.  Recently a disturbing number of “online directories” have surfaced that allow you to search for people online.  These sites all tend to have the same aggregated data; littered with equal part accurate details and complete errors.

Hand-in-hand with these online directories comes their more disturbing counterpart.  I was recently warned about spokeo.com from a few friends on facebook.  This site attempts to monetize not only the voyeurs who want to buy information about somebody else, but also those who want to remove information about themselves.  When you go to the privacy section of the site, you are greeted with a very reassuring promo for ReputationDefender, who promises to (for a small fee) keep your online reputation safe.

Does anybody else feel like this is becoming a mob-protection racket?  It is not hard to envision a company starting up two branches.  This branch offers to protect your online reputation, while the other branch actively attempts to compromise or damage your online reputation.  On the surface it seems like one is the enemy of the other; cops vs robbers, good guys vs bad, Daniel San vs Cobra Khai, but it’s not.  These companies are working hand-in-hand; both profiting by exposing as much compromising information as they can possible find (or in some cases, make up).  Most search engines profit by being more accurate.  The opposite is actually true in this case.  These companies don’t need accuracy; in fact if they can post a profile that is identifiable as YOU, but accidentally include an error that is particularly scandalous; they profit more!   Given that they are merely ”aggregating” this data, they can wash their hands of any responsibility for ensuring it’s accuracy.

Hopefully people will become more aware of these protection-style schemes.  I hope that this encourages people to shore up their online privacy, and to demand that the services they use do the same.  I also hope that pressure is put on these companies that prevents them from profiting from something that would be illegal in the real world.