SEO News

Online reputation management is something you would usually leave for the commercial businesses and companies to worry about, but don’t rest to easy as the internet is increasingly becoming a tool for investigating an individual’s profile.

It is common knowledge that businesses now use social pages to suss out what kind of character prospective employees are; do their photo albums depicts a party animal that gets wrecked every night or even if they are online during work hours, it all provides a useful insight into a person’s character.

Using the internet as a tool for job applications, is however, minor compared to the current increase of defendants being prosecuted with evidence coming directly from their Facebook or Bebo page. Andy Beal reports on two separate incidents of young adults, both caught and convicted of drunk driving, one of which actually killed someone.

During the time of the arrest and their court hearing the defendants still went onto their social network sites bragging about their drinking and one even posted an image of them in an orange prison officer. As funny as I am sure they thought it was at the time, they weren’t laughing so much when the prosecution used it against them during the trial with it being a primary corroborative factor towards their final conviction. One judge in particular stated that he had been willing to recommend probation in one of the cases until he thought to check her MySpace page while preparing for sentencing.

Both of these cases not only tell us of the sheer stupidity of some people but also demonstrate that our online social presence greatly contributes to our overall reputation. Before uploading images of you chugging a bottle of vodka, stop and think who will be looking at it… future employers, present employers, mothers, ex-boyfriends… no matter who it is, what they see will contribute to their overall impression of you. Therefore it is not only the major companies that must watch their back, we should as well, cause you just never know whose watching.