Online Reputation

Online crisis and reputation management

The proliferation of material published on the internet and on social media, the ease with which it can be accessed and the speed with which it can be spread can cause serious damage to the reputation of companies and individuals.

Greg Johnson Solicitors’s experience as the largest and most respected defamation and reputation management law firm in the UK means that we are well placed to tackle all forms of internet publications, ranging from online newspaper reports to malicious, anonymous blogs or social media publications.

We have secured the removal of online material, including photographs and film, for our clients. This includes from websites, blogs, other social media and links advertised by search engines in search results. In some cases we have obtained the taking down of hundreds of links to negative material. For the most part this has been achieved through correspondence and appropriate threats of court action, complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Independent Press Standards Organisation or other appropriate organisation.

The firm has been at the vanguard of litigation involving social media and we were instructed in one of the first ever cases involving defamatory Tweets. As well as libel and privacy, we have also successfully deployed the law of harassment against individuals who have used Twitter, Facebook and various blogs to threaten and cause distress to our clients.

We can:

• Help to identify and locate the authors of anonymous postings. We have obtained numerous court orders requiring internet service providers to disclose information, leading to the identification of the people involved and the obtaining of redress against them.
• Communicate with the publisher to seek to remove or modify false or intrusive material, and back up our communications with legal action if appropriate.
• Coordinate with overseas lawyers where the publications have an international dimension.
• Communicate with the leading search engines to block inaccurate information from search results.
• Conduct enquires, in consultation with IT experts, about the number and identity of people who have accessed the information.
• Work with a SEO specialists and PR teams to mitigate reputational damage caused by the offending material.