Technology (iphones, etc)

There are private companies known as “reputation management” companies that do this sort of work but, there are some drawbacks: 1) They primarily aimed at businesses, and therefore costly, and 2) They don’t give a price until you talk to them about your needs. There is a company called Removify, for example, which prices the content removal item by item, with discounts for multiple items – we are not affiliated with them in any way. It is, however, possible to do a lot of this oneself, for free. Some thoughts on that:

1) To start with, check out the Safety Net Team’s “Removing Sensitive Content from the Internet” resource. (They are another project within our larger organization) It takes a step-by-step approach that assumes no familiarity with content removal or tech. It begins with checking to see if reporting the content (to Twitter, for example, if it’s posted there) can get it removed. There is an online privacy company called Abine that has some tips for increasing the likelihood of success,  and processes to get it removed from search engine results if it falls into certain categories. The latter sections are about getting content that you have succeeded in removing, removed from search engines’ caches (and an explanation of what a cache is in this context). Again, we are not affiliated with Abine and cannot vouch for them.

If some of these posts involve intimate (sexual) images, you might be able to get help with removal from the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a national non-profit organization whose helpline number is 1-844-878-2274.

Another method is burying search results – which can be an alternative or supplement to getting the content removed. This is very likely going to involve creating a yourname dot com website. The website doesn’t have to have much information on it. It doesn’t even have to have real information on it. Or a person could create some other website that’s at least somewhat relevant to them (one about a hobby, for instance), and include their name somewhere on it and/or add their name as a meta keyword in the HTML. It’s important to know that if Google thinks someone is ”stuffing” the HTML with irrelevant meta keywords to boost search results, they’ll actually downgrade the page in search results, not upgrade it.

Abine, the online privacy company mentioned above, has a blog post about various sites through which creating a public profile in one’s own name can be used to bury search results. Creating this sort of real-name content is the main way to bury search results but it should be created with privacy considerations in mind, such as not using your normal email address and phone number to register for accounts, and not sharing location in any way . And again, the content need not be truthful, or relevant to one’s private life – it’s just that it would be content that doesn’t show the person in a negative light and would come up during a search of the person’s name. 

You may want to connect with a local domestic violence program [HYPERLINK] to see if they have any advocates who are tech savvy and can help you with this.