Repent at leisure.
Today’s deadtree edition of the Wall Street Journal has a front page article by Vauhini Vara with the misleading title “Covering Your Tracks In an Online World Takes a Few Tricks.”
I thought it would explain how nasties spoofed IP addresses or some such.
But no.
The actual topic is about how hard it is to revise your virtual history once it’s out there on the Web — even if you aren’t the one writing it, and what’s out there isn’t factual.
Google, Yahoo! and similar search engines aren’t helpful.
Even if you manage to force cooperation from, say, Amazon to remove a spurious review or, say, MySpace to delete a blog, the review or the blog might lead a zombie existence in archives such as The Wayback Machine, which has archived webpages beginning in 1996.
(I don’t know whether to be relieved or annoyed that a search of The Wayback Machine for www.cehwiedel.com comes up empty.)
This has particular implications for in-house blogs started to promote a particular business. Transparency and accuracy should be paramount because expunging an error is hard work, and repairing a business reputation is harder.
This also bears on individuals who might pull youthful web-based pranks fueled by a kegger at their college fraternity, only to have the virtual hangover last through job interviews after graduation.
Think before you click that Publish button.
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