How Reputation Management Can Help You Stay Private?

Let's face it. Big Brother is watching. Whether you like it or not, you are leaving a digital trace and your personal life every time you use your favorite social media account (or several). And those crumbs of privacy you scatter along your way are eagerly collected, scraped, and analyzed by Facebook, Google, and other less benevolent corporations. They have a use for your information, including reputation management. It's to profile you in a highly accurate way so that they can give you publicity tailored to your taste, things that you will definitely want to click explore.

If you're not scared so far, then know this: all that data is available to anyone who wants it. Yes, they have to pay for it, but it's surprisingly cheap.

If privacy is a concern for you, the good news is that there are many ways to keep your privacy, well, private. You can manage what tech companies know about you. And if you are really serious about exercising control over this flow of information, then paying for an ORM (online reputation management) service is an option you should consider.

What is Reputation Management?

Reputation management is the practice of managing somebody's image, whether it's an individual or an organization. This is done by continually monitoring and tweaking messages accessible to the public, such as posts on multiple social media accounts and platforms. But that's not the whole thing. Mugshot and arrest record cover-ups, removal of customer feedback and reviews, and manipulation of search engine results are also part of it.

High-profile executives and celebrities are most often associated with a service such as reputation management. It's pretty obvious why they can find this type of service more useful. But that is not to say that people who live with more average profiles can't benefit from having their publicly available information managed carefully by professionals.

Here are five online reputation management services.

1. Delete Me

It specializes in deleting personal information published by data brokers the actors who collect and sell personal data online.

You will tell them the type of information you want them to examine. Then they will prepare a report telling you precisely what is information about you available to the world out there and tell you what possible steps you can take to move forward. From then on, they will monitor your personal information and delete it every quarter.

Prices start at 129 USD per year for a single-person service. Packages for two and up to four people are also available.

2. One Rep

This one will remove your personal information from Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines.

OneRep researches any of your information available out there in the wild, send opt-out requests in your stead, make sure that those requests are honored, and will continue to keep a vigilant eye on the web so that new instances do not appear.

The single-person service costs 14.95 USD per month or 99,95 per year. A family service (up to six persons) is also available.

3. Reputation Defender

This is one of the most complete services for online reputation management out there --and one of the priciest too. The platform offers clients the option to use either automated or managed services to monitor. They will watch and maintain your online image, so you don't have to worry about it.

You have four services on offer: search result monitoring, digital privacy, online review, and corporate or executive-level consultation.

The package price starts at 3,000 USD and can be as high as 25,000 USD depending on how many services you want to hire.

4. Brand Yourself

BrandYourself is one of the industry's pioneers. The company's history started when its co-founder found that he shared the same name as a criminal, so he suffered from an early case of digital reputation transference in search engine results.

Several options are on offer here too. Search result monitoring, social media cleanup, privacy protection, and personal branding management are available to clients.

You can pay 99 USD for the company's DIY software or hire a managed service at a 599 USD yearly fee.

5. Kanary

Kanary keeps an eye on hundreds of sites for personal information or quotations that include its clients.

It's somehow akin to DeleteMe or OneRep in that you, as a client, submit the information you want Kanary to research. Then the service will have that information deleted and will keep monitoring the digital space for further apparitions.

The price is 9.99 USD monthly, which makes it the most accessible service on this list.

Controlling your information yourself

If hiring an ORN service is not within your budget, there's no need to worry. There's plenty for you to do to help your online reputation.

The first thing to do is to review all your software and apps. See the settings in each one and make sure that you have everything configured so that privacy is guaranteed, or at least helped.

You probably can't avoid using certain services or apps.

Yes, Facebook is so intrusive, but it's also so valuable for keeping in touch with so many people you don't want just to delete from your life, right? If you absolutely must have a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, instant messenger, or whatever account, keep your data to a minimal level. Also, take care of your content on social media platforms, and in this task, Adobe Express can help you with its various features and tools such as Instagram Story Maker.

In those platforms in which your identity is not so important, consider going pseudonymous. If any picture of you goes online, remove any identifying data. Last, but not least, opt out of online marketing by protecting your browser sessions against cookies and trackers. Sign up for do not call registries and ignore spam.