As for your comment about the law students, you are right, NO ONE deserves that under any circumstances, however as you pointed out THEY posted the pics on the PUBLIC internet on a SOCIAL NETWORKING site.

People need to understand that it is PUBLIC, and people are going to do stupid things. If you don’t want an online reputation/to be bother/etc. and want to stay anonymous, then DON’T put your name on the internet, no social networking sites, no comments on Digg, et. al.

We would like to offer some information in response to your opinion on ReputationDefender.com’s work. While you might not find the comment that Julian wanted removed particularly offensive, ReputationDefender seeks to help people in a variety of situations, so long as they are not seeking to remove court records or news articles. Indeed, we have helped many clients whose offline lives were severely harmed by their online reputations before ReputationDefender helped them destroy the damaging content. For example, our work with a group of female law students who were sexually harassed and threatened with violence by anonymous posters on a popular law school discussion forum is discussed in the Washington Post this week:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/06/AR2007030602705.html

These women, who include our clients, did nothing to invite these hateful attacks. Their only “mistake” was to post innocuous pictures on social networking sites – something many of us have done. Once aware their pictures were being used, the women requested that the site remove the pictures, and were ignored and publicly mocked. They then turned to ReputationDefender. The site was shut down after we repeatedly effected the removal of the pictures.

We formed ReputationDefender.com to provide a needed service to help private individuals, like these women, who have no other recourse. Among other benefits, destroying the misappropriated images of these women can prevent negative career consequences that these women would otherwise suffer. We are also working to change the sexually harassing culture of this website through a petition, which asks that this particular discussion forum establish a transparent mechanism for resolution of these sorts of complaints and disputes. For more information about our campaign and petition, please see http://reputationdefender.com/campaign_home.php.

Please let us know if you have questions about our work.

RDBlogger
reputationdefender.com

Thanks,
Charlie

From Chris: Removed the phone number for privacy considerations.