05
Mar
Brand.com Victim Of Blackmail Attempt, Says President Mike Zammuto
Brand.com president Mike Zammuto has revealed that the brand management company was the victim of a recent blackmail and extortion attempt. In the wake of the demands, Brand.com has engaged in a series of online battles between the company and the unnamed attackers, whose defamatory posts and cyber-attacks are pitted against an ongoing criminal investigation.
In December, the company received an email demanding $500,000 in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer payment system and digital currency. The person or persons who sent the email said that they would attack Brand.com and its president, causing them to lose business, if they were not paid.
The company refused, resulting in two libelous posts targeting Mike Zammuto published on RipoffReport.com within days of each other. One post, added by someone allegedly posing as a former employee, accused Zammuto of using client money for pornography and asking her to perform “unethical acts” in front of him. The other post accused Zammuto of running an online Ponzi scheme and “rigging Google’s crawlers to manipulate the search bar” so that a client’s online reputation actually becomes worse. The posts were almost immediately ranked in search engine results under Zammuto’s name.
The company says it became its own client, using its “de-indexing” program to commission content on websites in Brand.com’s publishing program and engaging in other online defensive measures. The goal, according to the company, was to publish content that would outrank the defamatory posts to suppress them in search rankings, thereby making them hard to read. Later, in response to a legal request, Google removed three of the damaging pages from Zammuto’s search results.
The attempt against Brand.com is not the first time a blackmailer has tried to extort Bitcoin out of a target.
Last year, a Tennessee man was charged with blackmailing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during the height of his presidential campaign.
Michael Mancil Brown was charged with six counts of wire fraud and six counts of extortion after sending a letter to PricewaterhouseCooper, the accounting firm that handled Romney’s taxes, claiming to have gained access to his 2010 tax return.
Brown demanded $1 million in Bitcoin and invited interested parties who wanted the purportedly stolen tax document to be released to transfer $1 million in Bitcoin to another account. The Department of Justice said Brown probably used Bitcoin because of its anonymity.
The cryptocurrency is essentially a code that is spent like cash online, and has been used for illegal activity in a deep-web black market known as the “Silk Road,” often referred to as the “Amazon.com of illegal drugs.”
While Mike Zammuto was forced to take a reactive approach to protect his online reputation in this case, he urges professionals to be proactive about their online appearance and their personal branding practices.
In an interview with Personal Branding Blog, he said, “Professionals should understand that online attacks can come at any time, and as such, they also need to be prepared to take action against all-of-a-sudden attacks – that means firing out content on the spot and doing whatever it takes to push back negative listings. You need to be aggressive.”
Similarly, Zammuto recommends that professionals make monitoring their reputation a priority, starting with the use of Google or reputation management alerts and having a strong social media presence.
“Finally, note that any kind of content creation—such as blogging—provides the search engines with substance, which you can leverage to improve your personal or corporate brand,” he said.
The growing need for online reputation management is especially evident due to the proliferation of revenge sites such as The Dirty and Cheaterville, Zammuto says. These types of websites can negatively affect a person’s online reputation, and because they host user-generated content, they are often protected from being held accountable for any libelous information posted without the victim’s permission. By 2010, the percentage of companies that disqualified job candidates due to online content passed a staggering 70 percent.
There are efforts in place, however, to hold individuals responsible for posting libelous content accountable for their actions. The Communications Decency Act of 1996, which was the first attempt by the United States Congress to regulate pornographic material on the Internet, makes an important distinction between providers of “interactive computer services” and “information content providers.” An interactive computer service “provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server,” while information content providers are any person responsible “in whole or in part… for the creation or development of information.
Section 230 of the CDA states that no Internet entity has immunity from federal criminal law; this means that service providers, social networking platforms, websites, and search engines are legally accountable for the content they host.
The law only provides immunity to online intermediaries of third-party content, meaning that individuals who directly engage in unlawful conduct online are not protected. It protects intermediaries from liability for the actions of others, not individuals from liability of their own illegal conduct. So while the owners of a revenge website are protected, the person who posts the libelous information is not.
While Section 230 does protect free speech, it also seeks to enforce federal criminal laws “to deter and punish trafficking in obscenity, stalking and harassment by means of computer,” and is intended to promote and protect the values of privacy and security.
According to Mike Zammuto, Brand.com is working closely with law enforcement to get to the bottom of the blackmail and extortion attempt. He is confident that arrests will be made soon.
[Photo Credit: Getty Images]
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This just goes to show the more exposure you have, the more prone you are to be attacked online.
For this to happen on a corporate scale and a political one as exampled, just goes to show the importance in keeping your eyes and ear to your search results. No rest for the wary.
Way too much freedom on the Internet these days for anyone to post anything, regardless of validity. And search engines are enabling these thugs by allowing the junk to rank.
This is CRAZY! First -- Why Bitcoins?! Second -- Extortion? Seriously?! Who ever was behind this obviously lives in their parents basement.
Interesting approach for a blackmailer to threaten the reputation of a reputation management company. What did they think was going to happen?
" Don't respond. Contact the authorities. Get back to building a great company."--- What great advice.
LOL @ Bitcoin being the new currency of choice for extortion artists! Whatever happened to a briefcase full of unmarked 20s?
It's a shame that this can happen so easily, and that most "average" people probably see too many obstacles (mostly financial) to defend their name.
Wow, this just goes to show how far people can go to invade peoples' personal lives and attack their online profile. I hope business owners are aware of how important owning their brand is!
As soon as you get a little bit popular, there's always someone there that will try to take it away from you.
There are definitely lines that can be crossed when you claim free speech as a defense. Once it moves into criminal based sentiment, there are rights must be upheld for the victim. Great article bringing this practice to light.
I can't believe how low people will stoop! If some of these people would get a job and stop using others, the world would be a better place!
The more you are in the public eye, the more situations like this happen - it is imperative that any growing company focus on protecting its reputation and online search results.
“Professionals should understand that online attacks can come at any time, and as such, they also need to be prepared to take action against all-of-a-sudden attacks – that means firing out content on the spot and doing whatever it takes to push back negative listings. You need to be aggressive.” This is invaluable advice for anyone who wants a good online reputation!
You must be prepared for anything to happen. Be proactive and protect yourself before anything negative populates the first page of your search results.
People try to take the easy way out, hopefully once the word of de-indexing spreads to more people, attackers won't even attempt to blackmail someone because they know it will be a waste of time and it can get removed.
It is great to see a company stand up to malicious attacks. If you give in to blackmail once they will keep coming at you.
This is more proof that anyone can be attacked online. Everyone should be proactive and monitor their online brand!
@StephPlease Great question! If you are interested in researching crytocurrency and digital currency (which is slightly different from virtual currency), you can start to see the pros and cons for a con artist to prefer Bitcoin over cash:
One of the 'pros' in favor of such new currencies is obvious: that such new currencies can be exchanged electronically and securely without need for third parties such as banks or PayPal and the like.
Separate but related fun fact about new currencies: Did you know that prisoners in China were forced to farm virtual gold according to Forbes?
@DustenCarlson apparently. i also agree with @TarekOsman , what was going through this person's mind?
@adirao Your question about Bitcoins as a new currency of choice for extortion artists just made me of an idea for an incredible action movie! Hmm... I was going to assume Bitcoin means less labor lugging loads of cash around. Also, I'd imagine because it is electronic/digital, perhaps easier to distribute or hide or move around/transfer at a fast, unnoticeable, hard-to-catch rate. (Obviously, I watch too many action movies.)
@adirao Bitcoin is even better than unmarked bills - completely anonymous transferring of money!
@Jules Pileggi A lot of honest things about honest people can be used by anyone for any reason to make a person look bad. Too many people have too many ulterior motives and are too afraid to show who they really are. It's a shame. Those kinds of individuals will not succeed in the end.
In business, I support healthy, open competition because it elevates the industry as a whole and offer consumers more options. However, in business, I would not imagine extortion, blackmail, defamation, fake negative reviews, etc. That's just TOO MUCH!
@chaseutley Its much easier to hide a Bitcoin login in mom's basement, which is probably where this creep lives.
@DariusCoit I am a believer that honesty wins. Just keep a clean slate. Nothing to worry too much about besides the stress and labor of protecting yourself, but other than that, all things will work out... Actually, that's not true. That's only a fairy tale. Think of Henry Wallace, 33rd VP of US and his pro-peace beliefs during WWII. In the end, he was framed as an 'anti-American' by Truman and forced to resign, although supported the Americans and US economy throughout WWII and even afterwards during post-war... He continued to live the rest of his life advocating for peace but was forced to resign and give up his career because Truman won the reputation battle.
@VeazeyJ +1 Love your positivity/perspective on how to address personal branding issues!