Reputation Defender or: Privacy 2.0 as a business model

A company called Reputation Defender is offering an interesting service:

We scour the Internet to dig up every possible piece of information about you and present it in an interactive monthly report.

They scan social networks like MySpace or Facebook, professional review websites, blogs, news sources, pics and videos at Flickr, YouTube, etc. and

millions of additional sites on the "open Internet."

All for $15,95 a month. So it sounds like they know how to use Google and Technorati. Wow. But it gets better: They have lawyers!

If we find an item of online content you don't like, we'll carry out our proprietary DESTROY process for you on that item for the one-time low fee of $29.95. This is where the rubber hits the road. It is an arduous and time-consuming process for our team of specialists, but we work hard so you can sleep better at night. You don't pay this till you command us to DESTROY unwanted online content.

Which probably means they send automated cease-and-desist letters (also called "nastygrams") in the manner of the recording industry mafia.

I don't particularly dislike this offer, though I may sound like (which is probably because their wording is just over the top). I do think it is yet another sign that people feel there is a business case in protecting privacy. Which is a good thing. I only wonder how much they would ask for getting all the information about us that is not on the web, but in large corporate data warehouses. I also wonder how they will deal with the obvious "censorship" accusation, especially if they want to target news sites and bloggers. Anyway, the Privacy 2.0 bubble is growing, it seems.