Dude, who stole my identity?

At the end of last year forwarded me Think PLANK‘s 10 for ’10 Convergence Trends.

It’s a well thought-out and researched report. Point 9 picked up on the increasingly debated concerns over Erosion of Privacy. Are we becoming a society of over-sharers? Are we risking our safety and reputation on a daily basis while getting caught up in the heady excitement of new social networking technologies?

There are as many opinions on this as there are social networks themselves. In my mind though the most important issue is personal choice. While I’m as permanently connected as the next Social Media geek I, like others, have requirements for privacy. These can be easily breached with a quick tweet including @darika or a Flickr photo tagged darika which may not conform to the way I want to be represented either on- of off-line.

Brand reputations are also sensitive to unknown content appearing online. There are a few tools which can  help at least track online, so that damaging content does not lie un-noticed.

Social Media monitoring software

This has been well covered by others, here’s a selection of good analyses

• Dave Chaffey: review of 26 tools
• Econsultancy Online reputation and buzz monitoring buyers guide: slightly out of date but lists the main ones

Image search

• Photo Tagger: find photos of you on Facebook even if you’re not tagged
• TinEye: Reverse image search engine (try it out by uploading your brand logo, there’s also a commercial API)

Comment tracking

• YackTrack.com: Tracks comments about content you’ve created or posted online, even if the conversation shifts elsewhere
• Disqus: Useful for collating conversations across multiple platforms to remain under the original content

Other

• 123people.co.uk: Type in your name or your CEO’s name and see what it pulls in from the web…

What other tools are people are using? Specifically to protect brands online?