Hoyt Neal

In a world where there are tens of millions of Google and website searches per minute, protecting one’s online reputation can be critical. Your reputation and perhaps your business could depend on it. Notwithstanding the broad protection for statements of opinion and regulatory immunity, there are still several steps anyone can take to address and possibly eliminate highly negative and false reviews. My top strategies are the following: Examine Your Online Footprint : Regularly review your online profile—in other words, Google yourself and regularly check online review websites like Yelp so as to identify what, if any, negative reviews are out there about you. Respond : Consider posting a response to the negative review so that users can learn the true facts. Contact the Sites : You can contact the site and ask that the information be removed or corrected. To do this, you should locate the site’s privacy policy and terms of use. In this current climate where sites li

We live in a world in which the internet has the potential to amplify defamatory communications unparalleled in human history. Plainly, the World Wide Web vastly expands the reach and impact of online defamation, invasions of privacy, bullying and even revenge porn—all with the very real possibility that such cyber attacks are accessible in perpetuity. Ever increasingly, lawyers are playing a counseling and litigation role in protecting clients from the posting of negative information and reviews that otherwise might live on in the blogosphere forever. This changing world thus alters the traditional role of lawyers who heretofore were hired to write threatening demand letters and pursue lawsuits against the alleged perpetrators (and repeaters) of such informational wrongdoing. Today, the challenge becomes even identifying who are often anonymous online attackers, convincing internet service providers and websites to provide relief, and assisting clients in orchestrating reputatio