Saturday, January 23, 2016

Digital laundry and reputation management services

Korea's extensive, advanced and fast broadband networks come with many advantages and allow consumers here to be among the first in the world to experience somethings.  For example, Cyworld, a web-based social networking service was introduced half a decade before Facebook and was universally popular among young people at the time of Facebook's introduction.
However, Korea's advanced networks also present some problems.  Internet addiction became a concern in this country years before being recognized in other countries.  These days, as reported by The Korea Joongang Daily, the problem of online scams such as porn phishing has led to concerns about privacy the digital reputation of individuals.  These concerns, in turn, gave rise to the business of digital laundry, which refers to the work of removing malicious comments or other online material to clean up an individual's online reputation.
The Korea Joongang Daily article describes the services provided by one digital laundry service, the Santa Cruise Company. Back in 2008, the company "...asked web portals to remove some malicious online comments about one of the company’s child models, and that was his first foray into digital laundry service.
After that, companies, celebrities and individuals began to knock on the door of Santa Cruise in hopes of getting rid of traces of their past lives or deleting negative comments associated with their names. Santa Cruise works with local web portals like Naver and Daum that host message boards as well as with local file-sharing services like Webhard."
(click on the graphic at left to see a full size version)

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