'Cyber Tracing Teams' Are on the Move

Written by Jart Armin

Is your company, or are you, being defamed on the Web? Are whistleblowers leaking your secrets? Well, call your local “cyber tracing team” -- they can fix the problem for you.

The day feared by many who advocate freedom of expression on the Internet may be upon us. Cyber tracing is fast becoming an attractive and lucrative industry with a wide range of services on offer.

Some high-profile cases that have featured cyber tracing recently include the former Yale Law School students claiming defamation on an internal college Website; and model Liskula Cohen suing Google to get access to the identity of an anonymous blogger posting derogatory messages.
These are just a sampling: Minara El-Rahman of the site FindLaw maintains that the stakes are high, and there is no shortage of victims in today’s world of widespread and instant messaging.

There are several facets to the problem of Internet defamation, however, apart from anonymous, personal attacks posted on Twitter or Facebook and widely distributed within seconds. There are disgruntled and vengeful ex-employees making false or misleading statements that can have a real impact on the fortunes of a company. There are whistleblowers believing it safe to reveal all about corporate wrongdoings in Wikileaks.

The rights or wrongs of defamation on the Internet, as well as questions of identity protection, are issues on their own, but just a cursory browser search reveals that cyber tracing is a growth industry with a plethora of law firms and private investigators specializing in this field and advertising their services in a variety of ways.

Indeed, it seems that cyber tracing is big business, and arguably more lucrative than personal accident ambulance chasing.

Although most would think this form of digital ambulance chasing would be a U.S. innovation, it is a U.K. law firm, Wragge & Co., that appears to be a leader in this area. The firm recently announced a new department specializing in hunting down the makers of anonymous online statements, and it appears they even claim the ability to trace anonymous Web users as part of the service.

Cyber-related services offered by firms like this range from tracing perpetrators of stalking, sexual harassment, and online criminal behavior to “catching your spouse cheating,” a tactic where firms search through dating databases to locate specific email addresses.

No doubt an argument in favor of these services would be that they are filling a gap in law enforcement resources, but they also raise a series of ethical questions relating to privacy and the Internet.

Yet another twist is the appearance of companies offering “reputation management services,” where a subscription buys a monthly report detailing personal advice on your up-to-date online reputation. For another fee, instances of “bad reputation” comments revealed by dedicated name searching can be destroyed (no guarantee), or perhaps, if slanderous enough, used as evidence when suing for defamation.

Victims of defamation may soon find, however, that their potential share of rich pickings has shrunk, at least in the U.K. There, the Ministry of Justice is considering allowing only one action for defamation on the Internet -- even if the same defamation is repeated several times.

The most sensible approach to defamation or reputation that I have come across, however, is provided by blogger Michael Grimes on his Website, where advice on “managing your reputation" can be downloaded in a chart format.

While some Web users may consider the third-party cyber tracing route, or in some cases the not-so-legal route as offered by some online cyber tracing services (i.e., hacking), hopefully the vast majority on the Web will see reason, and these cyber tracing teams may find their task a little more difficult than they bargained for.

— Jart Armin, Editor of RBNexploit.com, a watch blog on the infamous RBN (Russian Business Network), and HostExploit.com