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Thursday, January 8, 2009
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No, you can't get bad stuff about you deleted from the Web

Computerworld did a story about whether you can bet bad things deleted about you from the Web. They found that, unsurprisingly, you generally can't. Of course, there are exceptions. Slashdot, this blog, and one of my others combined to get thousands of scammy, lying web pages taken down from the site JLove. But those pages contained clear-cut, no-two-ways-about-it falsehoods, and were automatically generated to boot.

And so I repeat the advice I gave before:

A variety of people have asked about how to combat this kind of scam, and there's really only one good answer: Everybody should have their own web presence, visible to the search engines. Of course, that's easier said than done, but my two-part (so far) advice about search engine optimization for enterprises has a lot of applicability to people as well. For starters, if you don't already have a personal web page (with your name in the URL), get one. Then get a few friends (or your employer) to link to it. And so on.

... The internet WILL tell stories about you, true or otherwise. Make sure your own version is out there too.

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About Curt Monash

Curt Monash is a leading analyst of and strategic advisor to the software industry. Praised by Lawrence J. Ellison for his "unmatched insight into technology and marketplace trends," Curt was the software/services industry's #1 ranked stock analyst while at PaineWebber, Inc., where he served as a First Vice President until 1987. He subsequently co-founded Evernet, Inc., a $40 million networking systems integrator. Since 1990, he has owned and operated Monash Research, an analysis and advisory firm covering software-intensive sectors of the technology industry. In that period he also has been co-founder, president, or chairman of several other technology startups.

Curt has served as a strategic advisor to many well-known firms, including Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, AOL, CA, and Netezza. Curt earned a Ph.D. in mathematics (Game Theory) from Harvard University. He has held faculty positions in mathematics, economics and public policy at Harvard, Yale, and Suffolk universities.

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