“This doctor has fake diplomas on his wall and his treatment never worked on my daughter, in fact worsened her condition further. Please be cautious of him”
“This store sells counterfeit and knock off products of popular brands at regular prices. Please don’t shop from here”
“This restaurant serves dog meat in the name of chicken, please avoid yourself from falling sick”
Does any of this sound familiar? Is someone out there anonymously defaming you?
It takes time to build a good reputation in society. But thanks to the internet, it’s very easy for people to defame you online by anonymously posting damaging things about you or your company. The worst part of it all is that their claims are not even true. They end up raising red flags about your business in the mind of a consumer and putting your business in jeopardy.
But the good news is that it’s possible to track these trash talkers, let’s find out how:
Online Platforms: Wikipedia articles, online message boards i.e., Quora, Reddit, Snapzu, and emails to competitors, employees and clients are a few avenues to keep an eye out for defaming content about you/your company. These are usually carried out using anonymous or fake email addresses/ usernames.
Track Information: With the help of reverse e-mail lookup tools like Lusha, Rocket Reach and Spokeo, it’s possible to find out the identity behind the e-mail address and confirm if it’s active or not. These tools dig deep into the web to reveal the perpetrator by searching all platforms/sites whilst also reporting pseudo addresses.
IP Address: The IP address is a unique identifier of a device on the internet or a local network, it can help reveal a device’s geographical location within 25 miles at 81% accuracy. But tracking it down isn’t always easy. For example: If the individual had logged into Wikipedia using a fake account, then their IP address is visible only to Wikipedia; thus, accessible to you through a subpoena. But if the individual has just edited your Wikipedia page without logging in, then their IP address can be accessed by the public. For defamatory statements that aren’t on Wikipedia, there are other ways to find out the target’s IP address.
With an IP address, it’s easy to find your defamer but sometimes these addresses are hidden behind a personal ISP, Proxy, or onion router. In such a case, you’ll have to compel your defamer to send you a document in pdf, doc, ppt, etc., file types as they contain metadata that can help locate your target.
Snoop through E-mail: Tools like Read Notify, Get Notify, and outreach can be used to extract more information about an individual. When the perpetrator opens the mail sent through one of these tools, the services will send snapshots of their IP address, location, date and time the message was opened, number of times and devices it was opened, how long the email was read, and if the mail was forwarded.
With an enticing subject line, you can compel the individual to open the mail because one click is all you need; similar to clickbait.
Honeytrap Websites: These websites can be used to expose the identity of an individual. All you have to do is attach the link to a honeytrap website in your Get Notify email and wait for the target to land on the site. The link can even be pasted along with your apology or another type of luring comment on the original defaming post.
Setting up a honeytrap blog is easy, all you have to do is ensure to place a No index tag on the site thus restricting the search engines from crawling it, which means that the website will not be visited by many but mostly your target.
While all of this might sound like a simple process, it could be a daunting task. But AiPlex is equipped with resources and tools that can help you identify these anonymous detractors maligning your personal brand or corporate reputation. If you’re looking for a comprehensive online reputation management solution to identify and mitigate such anonymous threats , please drop us a line.
