“Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was.”

 

How much is your reputation worth to you, and how careful are you to protect it?

Everyone loves  just a little bit of gossip.  As it happens I am rubbish at being a purveyor of gossip, and I am always the last to hear anything that’s going on.  In an average day I probably spend less than 1% of my time on it.  But I think I am an atypical outlier here.  What would you say your average daily quotient is?  I know people who are up in the 50% plus sector.  That takes commitment.

Not many of us like being gossiped about of course.  Fortunately it is usually possible to stay blissfully unaware of it.  Except online.

Here your reputation is open to view.  And deliberate gossip about you is of course one problem, and this can be very upsetting.  Account hacking is another irritating issue.

For anyone who is worried about this there is a new way to insure that your reputation is protected online.

For just £3.99 a month you can insure your reputation here.

The company behind the scheme quotes startling figures for account hacking.  As ever with its enormous scale, Facebook leads at an average figure of 600,000 accounts hacked daily.  Twitter also receives a mention with 55,000 accounts hacked last May.

I enjoy my Twitter account (@sueu).  TV events are massively improved by seeing what the people I follow have to say about the entertainment on show.  Hearing what the Queen (not the real one) had to say about the Olympic opening ceremony on Twitter was superb entertainment.  However I notice that exactly half of all of the messages I get on Twitter are spam.  Tedious.  Bruce Daisley, if you’re reading this, I feel all our souls are diminished by messages that begin “Hello, somebody is posting really nasty things about you ….”.  Can you give me some advice on how to prevent it so that I don’t need to buy insurance?

Meanwhile Margaret Mitchell was writing, in the headline quotation, in days when your reputation was essential to social acceptability.   It is still however essential to business success, so you need to take some care to safeguard it.

 

 

 

One Response to ““Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was.””

  1. jem says:

    timely post, Sue. given yesterday’s events. jem