Microsoft recently commissioned a detailed study on the impact of and trends around online reputation.

The study was undertaken in part to contribute to “Data Privacy Day”, which falls on January 28, 2010. The survey results and conclusions available in a PowerPoint presentation.

Overview from the report summary:

This research examines the expanding role of online reputation in both professional and personal lives. It studies how recruiters and HR professionals use online reputational information in their candidate review processes, and how consumers feel about this use of their information. It investigates the steps consumers take to monitor and protect their online reputation.

We’ve uploaded the Powerpoint file to Slideshare.net and it’s viewable online here with a web browser.

[For a better viewing experience click the "full" button on the Slideshare toolbar to expand the presentation to full screen.]

An interesting blog this morning from the Washington Post. The added underlined emphasis is mine.

Celebrity Deaths — and the impact of an ‘overly Twittered culture’ by Adam Bernstein

Lisa France, a writer and producer at CNN.com, has this story today on celebrity death of 2009 and why it may appear to some that this year was different from the past.

Minor figures like Brittany Murphy and DJ AM get elevated to rock-star status for various reasons — the deaths come at a shockingly young age, for example — but mostly because those who care about their lives are young social networkers who drive tremendous traffic online.

Brittany Murphy had a devoted following but is vastly unknown to a great many film lovers. Which is not to say or imply she was without talent, but her performances drew mixed reviews, her promise was largely unfulfilled and she never said anything particularly memorable about her craft. Yet she gets outrageous attention because of online interest, whereas a proven and talented, Academy Award-winning actress like Jennifer Jones, who died days earlier, gets comparably little attention.

What do you think about the impact of social networking and what CNN’s France calls our “overly Twittered culture”?

An update to my blog of December 15.

The brandjacking of Ask Sunday and solicitation of victims to launder money continues. The company seems oblivious and has posted no warnings on their website or issued a public statement.

Meanwhile a chirpy rep tweets marketing messages.

This is a bone-headed response, or should I say non-response. The company was not at fault when criminals copied the website and brand, but they are at fault for not alerting their customers and innocent third parties.

Are the management clueless idiots asleep at the wheel?

I guess we’ll have to “Ask Sunday” and find out. If they are still in business.

Confused about Facebook’s new privacy changes? No surprise if you are, the changes are sweeping.

Here are two good up-to-date quality guides that I recommend.

From Reputation Defender (user-friendly with multiple screenshots)

From the ACLU Dotrights.org site (detailed, comprehensive, tabular grids showing options. Can be a bit intimidating for the novice)

Confused or not, you MUST be sure that you choose the correct settings to control what is public and private. The new Facebook defaults leave you quite exposed, with much of what you post on Facebook viewable by friends, enemies and strangers alike, unless you take action and adjust your privacy settings.

Well known virtual assistant outsourcing company AskSunday.com is the victim of a serious case of brandjacking.

The entire identity and website code of AskSunday.com has been copied and setup as another website with a similar sounding domain name, AskSundayllc.com, which has been online for a few weeks.

The operators of the fraudulent site are actively recruiting people from US based career sites, such as careerbuilder.com, and offering them jobs. Applicants who do respond to these solicitations are asked to provide identification and banking details in order to be paid by direct deposit.

Instead they will be used as “money mules” to receive the proceeds of fraudulent transfers from hacked and compromised US business bank accounts and ultimately to transfer the proceeds to criminals in Eastern Europe.

One of the potential victims lays out the story here

The copied website at AskSundayllc.com is hosted by a Russian webhost and is effectively out of immediate legal reach. Typically webhosts who provide facilities to criminal operations and fraudsters do not respond to requests to take down or disable rogue websites.

The phone number (646) 257-5840 is a Voice over IP (VOIP) number provided by Level 3 Communications and can be forwarded transparently anywhere in the world, even though it has a local New York City area code of 646.

In a follow-up blog I’ll provide more information on how to deal with and guard against internet brandjacking.

*We are in contact with management at AskSunday.com, though they are not a client of Highwick Associates.

Gangs in New York talk Twitter: Use tweets to trash-talk rivals, plan fights

Manhattan’s young thugs have turned to Twitter, and the cops who track them are fast behind, the Daily News has learned.

It’s old-school crime meets new technology: attacks being plotted – and thwarted – 140 characters at a time.

Read the full article at the New York Daily News

My take: Nothing to really worry about. Telephones, email, IM and all forms of electronic communication are used by the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The same goes for Social Media tools and platforms, especially when they are free and allow anonymous signups.

WARNING: Do not do business with the scam company Shanghai FeWo Corporate Domains Limited aka china-dnsnet.org and china-dnsnet.org.cn.

Shanghai FeWo Corporate Domains Limited
Tel: 0086-21-37529318
Fax: 0086-21-37529316 0086-21-37529317
Address: Room 515-516, No.885 Green Ark Building, East Huancheng Road,Fengxian District, Shanghai, China

This company attempts to extort money from legitimate domain name owners by sending unsolicited emails containing lies and deception. The emails, an example of which is seen below, includes an outright lie that another company (which doesn’t exist) wants to register a laundry list of Asian domain names which match the dot com (or other mainstream domain name) owned by the addressee of the email.

Though crafted to look genuine and relevant only to the recipient, these emails are sent to thousands of domain owners simultaneously and are no more than a form of phishing. The email addresses are harvested from the domain name registration details, which are publicly accessible.

Be very clear on the fact that the sole purpose of these emails is to scare and mislead people into paying the slimy toads at Shanghai FeWo Corporate Domains Limited for domain registration fees.

Those who do engage in correspondence will be told that the domain names might just be cybersquatted by this other (non-existent) company, unless you pay up now. Otherwise there’s nothing that can be done. In case you were wondering, it’s all lies, a scam, and it’s intentional.

If you have received one of these emails do not reply. Do not pay any money to Shanghai FeWo Corporate Domains Limited, aka china-dnsnet.org or any other company, website or registrar who makes the same claims.

Somewhat ironically Shanghai FeWo Corporate Domains Limited has a motto which reads “Realistic Honesty Innovation Development” Pity they don’t live up to it.

If you have already been a victim of this extortion the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) should be contacted and an official complaint lodged.

Note: Highwick Associates represents several clients who have received these extortion attempt emails and were very concerned about protecting their copyrights and brands. They were about to pay up, until they learned the truth about how this nasty little scam works.

Click on the image below to view a copy of their original email.

If you’re one of the many who wonder where all this social networking interconnectedness is going, and why it HAS changed at least a part of the world, I suggest you watch an important video rebroadcast of an event that took place in London a couple of days ago.

I warn you it’s a lengthy video, over an hour, but in it you’ll hear the real, up-to-date mega-overview from three people who are actually at the controls at 10,000 feet.

The three are:

* Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn,

* Biz Stone, founder of Blogger and Twitter

* Stephen Fry, thespian and twitter celeb

The format is a panel discussion with audience questions, so you’ll need to listen and try to grab onto the many facts and memes.

My take is that only the most hardened nay-sayer could fail to be wowed by the enormity of how powerful this stuff is.

Powerful as in world and business changing.

Permanently.

No that doesn’t mean everyone has to use twitter, join or use any service or website or worship anyone. Like it or not the change is happening around you. If you want to stay on the sidelines, or keep your relationships close and personal that’s fine. Just don’t deny there is a wave, otherwise you might just drown

Video is here at the Nesta website. No registration required. The event was part of the “Silicon Valley comes to the UK” series.

P.S. I found a pointer to this on twitter, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have seen it.

[Originally posted on the website of Social / Business Network Ecademy.com]

Ecademy’s “Like” feature defeats attempt to game the blogs.

(Ecademy) members should be aware that an attempt has been made to “push up” and maintain a blog at the top of the listings, by surreptitious means.

Specifically the blog Verified Safe Networking posted yesterday has a highly inflated view count. Soon after it was posted a “bot” or automated script was directed to view the blog post hundreds and hundreds of times, in quick succession. This action was directed from outside Ecademy by one or more persons. The result is similar to a lot of people clicking on a blog (or other content) and viewing it.

To a casual observer it would seem that the item was very popular, when it actually was only somewhat popular. The current view count of 2896 is extremely inflated. The correct number of views is probably closer to 350.

As I stated this was just an attempt to game or manipulate the blog section in order to draw attention to a specific blog. However, the implementation of the “Like” feature, and the adjustment of how blog rankings work defeated this attempt to game the system. These days far less weight is given to pure blog views and almost all to “likes” and comments, which reflect real interest and real member participation.

It is not possible to determine whether this was an organized or spontaneous action, though it absolutely was intentional.

Note: When overused this type of action can turn into a Denial of Service attack and can make a website unreachable. Fortunately this was not the case here.

The other face of social media and the price to be paid for speaking out against a government.

Bloggers Receive Prison Sentences