If you're afraid drunken Facebook photos and scandalous YouTube footage will scare employers away, here's a site that says it will come to your rescue.
ReputationDefender.com, co-founded in the spring by 2004 Penn alumnus Ross Chanin, is an online service that searches the Internet for references to its clients. The service then compiles monthly reports detailing the clients' presence in blogs, social networks like MySpace.com and Facebook.com, online news sources and photo- or video-sharing sites like Flickr.com and YouTube.com.
The service costs $9.99 per month for a two-year membership, but users can opt to have Reputation Defender "destroy" content by contacting the site where it is posted for $29.99 per undesirable item.
Chanin, currently the operations director at Reputation Defender, says the extent of information available on the Internet makes a site like his necessary.
"The Internet makes public citizens out of private citizens," he said.
Chanin says the problem facing most people now is one that celebrities have dealt with for years, and that his site serves as a type of public-relations firm for the average citizen.
"What were dealing with here is [cases of] 'micro celebrity," Chanin said.
He said that Reputation Defender has some Penn clients - though he wouldn't name them. Parents can also use the site's "My Child" service to monitor references to their sons or daughters.
Yet some experts say they are skeptical of the site's functionality.
"There is no guarantee that having a Reputation Defender device or site . would actually impact those messages at all," said Dan Durbin, a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
Chanin conceded that there are some kinds of records that cannot be removed.
"It is very difficult or impossible to remove any legitimate news sources or court records online," he said. "We'll never take any legal steps without first consulting our client."
Durbin said that it may be faster for students to contact the sites themselves if they are concerned about content, rather than going through a third party.
Regardless, he said that since scandalous content in everywhere on the Internet, Reputation Defender is a product that will sell.
Penn's Director of Career Services Patricia Rose agreed that the problem of Internet content affects many students; however, she said she is not familiar with the service.
"We do recommend that students be vigilant with their own postings and with their pages on Facebook, MySpace, etc.," Rose wrote in an e-mail. "Checking your online presence is an additional, necessary step for today's job seeker."
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