I know two trolls. Roger Rustad, and David Kaiser – they run socallinux.org.
If you read anything these two post on socallinux.org you can quickly determine they use this mailing list to defame whomever they choose – and because their mailing list gets both spidered by google, and mirrored by list-serv they get pretty much automatic SEO. Multiple domain names replicating messages. And if the mailing list gets any activity for any reason the SEO goes up.
This is like a troll sniper rifle. You want someone to go down in flames, or you just want to make them real miserable? Talk smack about them somewhere that gets spidered by google and replicated to other sites. If anyone googles them, they’ll find listserv messages, mail-archive.com and google cache results all parroting the original messages.
Google is like the force. It can be used for good and evil. In this example, we’re looking at using it for evil.
I never really took personal branding seriously until it bit me – and upon this realization immediately found a pretty blatant ‘vulnerability’. Well, it’s not REALLY a vulnerability, it preys on peoples inclination to believe what they read as fact and not take any time to check up on it – so it’s more like a social hack, or social engineering. This presents an attack vector that historically could only be used by larger media outlets.
Now, we have google, and google cache – these tools can be used to make someone miserable for a long period of time, or sway peoples opinion on things – or to make people believe whatever you choose.
Google your name. Seriously – open a new tab and type your name into google – see what comes up. Go at least 3-5 pages deep.
Is there anything in there that would prevent a company from hiring you, or a new client from signing a contract with you?
There isnt? – well thats a good sign!
What if I started writing emails on a tiny, but public email list (like listserv, or google groups), or wrote a few blog posts talking about how evil you were, and some evil things you’ve done – even if you’d done no such evil? That might not fare so well for you the next time someone does their homework on you.
“But thats libel” you say. True, that is in fact libel. People lying about you in print.
“You can sue for that!” Yep – you can! It’ll cost you, probably in excess of 5 or 10 grand and you’ll end up with a court order to the defendants issuing them to take down whatever needed to be taken down (Unless you sue for damages – for example if you can prove that clients walked away from you and companies won’t hire you because they found this stuff on google).
“Wow thats a headache” It absolutely is.
The bottom line is unless you’re prepared to throw 5-10 thousand dollars at the problem you won’t be able to do much other than ask nicely, and if asking nicely doesn’t get the job done you’re sorta boned. If you do have the money though, libel is libel – and if you can prove in court its libel, you win. Period.
So in summation: Using google to attack people, hurt brand names and generally troll has a VERY high success rate – but you’re liable to get sued.
Tags: branding, dan, daniel, dave, david, hacking, kaiser, personal, rog, roger, rustad, tentler