E- reputation is the perception of internet’s users about a company, its brand , its management , operation and monitoring. It is in other words the company’s image on the web. What are the risks for a company on the internet?
There are mainly three types of violations to be considered to determine the risks associated with online reputation of a business and take steps to prevent them.
1- Informational attacks
This is usually negative opinions can be issued by dissatisfied consumers of the product or service. These opinions are of major importance because they greatly influence the surfers.
It can also be false information including data generally disseminated by competitors. This behavior is an intentional act punishable by law. Or it may be information this time, true to jeopardize a company’s reputation. These injuries could therefore affect businesses occupying an important place on the market or new players offering innovative and promising that might pose a threat to the existing operators.
Finally bashing, this act is defined as the dissemination of information to discredit a company, brand or product in order to damage their reputation. The development of social networks has greatly promoted the acceleration of this offense.
2- Violations affecting the company’s identity
The best known are the diversion of logo, the attack will be made directly on the identity and vision of the company. It may therefore involve barriers to intellectual property laws.
Similarly spoofing consists to take an identity, a brand or product and to appropriate it. This can have the effect of diverting customers, and destabilize a major rival.
3- Attacks on cybercrime
Phishing, this practice is to enjoy the trust and naiveté of users or customer of the company by misleading the origin of a message to obtain confidential information about them. This is most often message on e-mail support inviting the applicant to make an adjustment of its confidential information.
Similarly smishing is done through SMS. Finally the Vishing is by a vocal sector to achieve the same purpose. These methods can be disastrous; not only for users who are on the extracted sensitive data but also for businesses that are losing the trust of their clients.
The Splogs, aimed at attracting public attention and display banners referring to pornographic sites or fake sites. The risk is for the company to be involved in those illegal sites.
Finally, cybersquatting is a method to take ownership of the domain names of a company even before it buys them.
Mazal LEVY
After obtaining a Master 1 of business Law I chose this year to specialize in digital economic law, a growth area for whom I have a deep interest.
