As time goes by, more of us are being tailed by some little thing out there on the Web, an awful bit that emerges when someone Googles our names---a black mark that we'd like to erase before a colleague or a prospective employer sees it.
So the question is: Is it possible for an ordinary person to get some damaging tidbit entirely erased from the Web?
If you're trying to get something erased from the Web, your first instinct might be to pursue legal action. Resist this urge.
Why?
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 gives almost total immunity to Web sites. Even if you can establish a legal case, the distinctly nonphysical nature of the Web--where you, your defamer and the company that hosts the offending material can be in different states or countries, or simply be unknown--means that sorting out jurisdictions can turn into a legal quagmire.
Users that want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page or the Internet hosting companies or ISPs hosting the content to find out their content removal policies.
Priority No. 1 is to try to reach a human being, says Chris Martin, founder of www.ReputationHawk.com, an online reputation management service. His company starts by tracking down someone who has access to the Web site in question--either the author or the material or a third party like a webmaster or Web hosting service.
The bottom line: An address or a live email account is good; a human on the phone is better, Martin says. "We call," he says. "We say we're from an Internet privacy corporation. We explain the situation, and we say, 'You need to take care of this as soon as possible.'"
Source: ComputerWorld, November 17, 2008