Do a digital clean-up and protect your reputation online

Have you checked your online profile? Prospective employers almost certainly will. Enter the ‘Reputation Managers’, digital clean-up crews that bury negative search results. Lisa Twomey reports

PEOPLE’s private information is a hot commodity these days, so much so that it has been called the new oil. Virtually every detail of our personal information, our age, address, even income can be available online. With technology such as facial recognition, we can be tagged and identified without even knowing it.

Everything that is posted about us online, whether by ourselves or by someone else, can be preserved. Negative reviews of a business can dominate search results. An embarrassing photo from a drunken Christmas party five years ago or a late night Twitter rant can surface … it is hardly going to make front-page news, but if someone wants to find it they can.