Nicholas Carroll
August 15, 2011

Positively identifying (and/or proving) the person or people who are defaming you on the Internet is one of the most difficult parts of fighting online slander (or libel, more accurately).

It's also one of the most useful – and perhaps the most important – elements in stopping online defamation, because online slanderers rely heavily on staying anonymous. When they get a cease-and-desist letter arriving through snailmail at their physical address, they get scared. With good reason, because now they are the hunted, not the hunter.

However in an online world filled with trolls, energy creatures, and sockpuppets [definitions at bottom of page], it is insanely difficult to track the slanderer back to their true identity. Even if you know who it is, it can still be near-impossible to prove.

Many "reputation defender" or online "reputation management" firms use a combination of vague legal threats and appeals for decent behavior. These rarely work as long as the slanderer is shielded by barriers like ISPs, web sites with bulletin boards where they can post anonymously, or social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace.

Nor does a victim of online defamation have much recourse against third-party website owners themselves, because of the ridiculously broad protections Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) gives website owners protection against hosting defamation posted by someone else. (I think the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually limit or strike down Sec. 230, but for now it's open season for cyber-kooks to run loose.)

I can't help you myself – and that is despite having 30 years programming and computer systems experience, most of it with the Internet, and much of it with web analytics and search engine optimization (SEO). Tracing emails back to their origin and extracting forensic information from social media sites is a specialized form of online detective work, and my experience is in analyzing patterns of Internet activity.

Cyber Investigators

This is where I suggest "cyber investigation" companies as a first stop, long before you call a lawyer. There are three reasons:

First, as mentioned, just identifying the perpetrator may end the defamation with a cease-and-desist letter – as much as 80-90% of the time. This is both fast and cost-effective.

Second – in case it does end up in court, you want a good case. As I used to advise readers in pre-Internet days when private investigation was gumshoe work, you want to hire the investigators first, not a lawyer, because once a lawyer starts charging around making threats, people act fast to cover their tracks. The forensic investigators may need a lot more evidence to convince a judge than a lawyer realizes. In fact, when you hire online investigators, if they're any good, they're really building your case for the lawyer Even though the good firms politely call it "litigation support," they're assembling the evidence and teaching the lawyers how to present it.

Third, cyber investigation firms that do a lot of forensics work will also have a list of lawyers who stand back while they build the case, and only then start sending cease-and-desist notices or filing a lawsuit.

Online Reputation Management (ORM)

Pure ORM companies focus on solving your problems without legal action, through reverse search engine optimization to push positive mentions of you higher in the search engines (which then pushes the offending pages lower, of course), or communicating with responsible social media sites and news websites when trolls and stalkers are violating the website's own "terms of service" (rules of behavior).

When they are claiming the ability to repair reputation assassination on search engines, social media, or mainstream media, reputable ones will not guarantee 100% success. Because of Section 230 of the CDA (mentioned above), a certain number of hosts will simply refuse to remove defamatory material. So a lot of "reverse" search engine optimization consists of building up a variety of positive web pages and reports about you, either driving the negative comments down into Internet obscurity, or mixing in enough positive information that anyone reading about you decides that the defamatory pages are just kooks.

However, this takes time – months or even a couple of years. If your tormentor stays busy, it's a long-term commitment in both stress and money. If the search engines change their indexing algorithms, then months of search engine optimization work can be undone overnight.

There is also a question of "leverage." Despite the myth that we are all equal on the Web, because we can all post, the fact is that a celebrity or high-profile organization has a lot more leverage than a private person or low-profile business. Celebrities can guest blog on major news outlets, broadcast to thousands of fans through social media, and call media connections to generate positive PR.

My general recommendation: try a cyber investigator first – and that's even if you know who's defaming you. They can put together a packet of damming evidence that very likely will give the libeler legal nightmares.

However their main service is the one I regard as crucial, because it's not only the first smart step, sometimes it ends the problem: identify the perp.

My specific recommendation: Cyber Investigation Services at www.cyberinvestigationservices.com

I've known the owner Bruce Anderson for about two years, and he convinced me in our first conversation that he knows the Web as well as I do, and far, far more about sleuthing than I do. Their prices are reasonable – lower than many cyber investigators – and I thoroughly approve of the way they focus on smoking out the perpetrator and building the evidence before getting lawyers involved (and creating legal expenses).

Cyber Investigation Services is only the second recommendation I have made for a legal service in 20 years of writing about law and consumer advocacy in books and major newspapers – despite hundreds of requests from law firms. Reason: I usually had no way to keep tabs on law firms, and many times I was not sure what service they were selling.

The reasons I am mentioning CIS favorably: 1. They work on the Internet, and that I can track. 2. I understand what they do, and the service makes sense to me: they identify the slanderer, deliver the proof (when possible), and you decide what to do about it. 3. Though they do charge a retainer to get started, most of their charges are based on results; unlike a lawyer, they don't charge you big bucks for losing a lawsuit. Also, as an author I hear from a happy reader every few months, but sending people to CIS, I can be pretty near sure my reader's problem is going to be solved, which is a lot more satisfying.

Nicholas Carroll
I'm the author of Fighting Slander, Law of the Blog, and Dancing with Lawyers (all of which are on the shelves of law libraries at eminent law schools.) This is a brief writing and legal biography, and a brief technical biography can be read here.

Financial Disclosure – May 8, 2012: At the moment, there isn't any financial disclosure to make, as I've never been paid any money or services by CIS. I may do business with them in the future, possibly as an expert witness in the areas of financial harms and emotional distress. At such time, I'll state it here. If so, that will constitute a second recommendation, because I'm extremely careful whom I do business with.

Definitions: Most online defamation used to come from trolls and energy creatures. The origin of "trolls" is uncertain – whether it is about physical trolls who hide under bridges and attack passersby, or comes from "trolling" for fish. In either case trolls are people who put out inflammatory posts to infuriate people. "Energy creature" has a clear origin, from the Star Trek TV series; these are trolls-to-the-max, and the more you fight back, the more they love it as they "absorb" your energy. Your anger is their strength.

However that was the early 1990s, when most users were technically savvy and knew how to track down trolls; when free (and anonymous) email accounts didn't exist; and there were no wireless connections, so a troll couldn't conveniently park outside a coffee shop and libel you anonymously.

So today we also have online sockpuppets, relatively non-technical people who still know enough to set up ten free email accounts, and log in from different fake user accounts to post libel about you. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_%28Internet%29)

Today "online" is a broad term – the defamation could begin online at in private or school or church discussion groups, professional discussion groups, a homeowners association or the workplace, then propagate to the WWW through websites, Facebook or Myspace, blogs, Ebay ratings or Amazon reviews, or even the old Internet standby of Usenet. It all comes to the same thing; when the defamation is propagated electronically it can spread fast, and go beyond embarrassment to do you real harm.