Reputation Management

There's your new buzz word. What does the internet know about you, and more importantly, what can you do about it? TIME and the New York Times both had recent stories about the depth of digital information. Reading through Joel Stein, the Epsilon hack of email addresses should give everyone pause. Are we certain they only got email address, not those behavior profiles? Is there such a thing as just slightly radioactive water?

What TIME covers is what they know and a touch on how to fix it. The NYT is all about digital white out. Or as we said back in the day, Soviet Revisionist History.

That's not entirely fair, as the Reputation.com folks will be quick to point out. A large amount of what is out there on you is probably wrong by accident or maliciously erroneous by design.

I might add, this is not exactly like the old CoSIDA sponsor LifeLock. Similar in that the reputation managers are out there to help you secure your digital identity from theft, but this is more about correcting the record and helping solve damage caused.

So who in the athletic department will be assigned this new task? One would hope the same people who should be in charge of the overall messaging of the department -- the sports public relations folks (ie, the SIDs) -- but knowing the sensitive nature of this work, I wonder out loud about who will really get the job.