Online Rumor Websites: How to Fight Internet Abuse (page 2 of 2)

Images from this article

clipart.com

"The business model of these websites is hate. They're promoting it," says a privacy expert.

javascript:void(0);

At rottenneighbor.com, users can trash the folks next door. Is a house in Boca Raton, Florida, really occupied by "the most obnoxious family alive"? Yes, according to one post, which claims that the girls who live there are sexually promiscuous, not to mention reckless behind the wheel. A street address and a Google Maps image of the house accompany the post. Creepy, huh?

"The business model of these sites is hate," says Parry Aftab, a lawyer who specializes in Internet privacy and security issues. "They're promoting it. They're encouraging you to say outrageous things."

Smear someone in a traditional media outlet, like a newspaper or a talk show, and you can end up in court. But the law that Congress passed in 1996 establishing basic Internet regulations prevents website hosts from being held responsible for what outsiders post on their sites. In other words, the law says that the kind of defamation that would get the New York Times sued is fair game on JuicyCampus.

Sure, gossip is an ugly fact of life. But the Internet has changed its impact. Gossip that used to be contained within a relatively narrow social world is now broadcast to a wider audience less able to assess its credibility, says Daniel Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University and the author of The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. And even a completely false allegation can last forever online. "Now we have a kind of permanent digital scarlet letter," says Solove.

We prize our right to free speech, but, experts like Solove say, we need to do more to protect another right: privacy. Meanwhile, some people are fighting back. Take the case of two young women victimized by several anonymous online thugs who posted threatening messages about them on autoadmit.com (which bills itself as "the most prestigious college discussion board in the world"). The unnamed attackers posted the women's photos, claimed that one of them had herpes, and wrote that both "should be raped."

In June 2007, the women filed a federal defamation lawsuit against the dozens of anonymous AutoAdmit users who made the comments (one of whom may have also used tricks to make the slurs appear as top results when the victims' names were Googled). By subpoenaing Internet service providers, the women have acquired some of the users' names; last August they named one publicly and are threatening to out more.

Maybe more cases like this one will make cowardly creeps attacking people from behind their keyboards think twice, lest they see their own reputations ruined in the end.

Do More

• Create a Google Alert for your name. You will receive an e-mail anytime you are mentioned somewhere online. Notify the hosts of the website where a smear about you has been posted; they will often take it down. The faster you respond, the less time a lie has to spread.
• Companies like Reputation Defender (reputationdefender.com) can help you wipe away lies that continue to appear in the records of Google and other search engines.
• Wiredsafety.org provides advice for victims of online harassment.
• Daniel Solove's book The Future of Reputation can be downloaded for free at futureofreputation.com.
  

From Reader's Digest - December 2008

• Michael Crowley
• • Cybercrime
• • Privacy

• Protect Yourself Online
• Your guide to defending yourself against Internet fraud.
• 
• To Catch an Identity Thief
• "I hunted down the woman who stole my life."
• 
• Hi-Tech Stalker
• No matter where she went, he was there.
•