The Blog of P.U.R.E. and Sue Scheff

Sue Scheff and Michael Fertik , CEO of Reputation Defender , recently were on the BBC and NPR Talk Radio with Dan Damon. The National and International attention that ReputationDefender is attracting is due to the overwhelming use of slander and defamation on the Internet. With today's Cyberspace world - more people will Google others to get information about them. It is critical to monitor your online reputation. Like Identity Theft, this can be devastating and potentially ruin businesses and people's lives. As a victim of Internet Defamation, I have decided to share my success story after the horrors of slander, defamation and invasion of privacy I endured.

Calling In Pros to Refine Your Google Image By Susan Kinzie and Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, July 2, 2007; A01 At the height of the cyber-abuse, Sue Scheff , a consultant to parents of troubled teens, would type her name in a Google search box and brace herself: Up would pop page after page of attack postings. Sue Scheff is destroying lives. She is a con. She takes kickbacks. She is the biggest fraud there ever was. The stream of negative comments began in 2002 after a woman who had sought advice from Scheff turned on her. The postings appeared on PTA Web sites in Florida , where Scheff lives. On bulletin boards and online forums. There were even YouTube videos threatening her. She sued for defamation and won an $11.3 million verdict , but the attacks only got worse. In December, Scheff turned to ReputationDefender , a year-old firm that promised to help her cleanse her virtual reputation. She no longer dreads a Google search on her name. Most of the links on t...

Reputation Defender and MyEdge is a service that is priceless in an age where a few keystrokes can literally destroy years of a reputable buisiness or person. Forbes, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Orlando Sentinel, New York Post and many other major news outlets have featured Reputation Defender and their unique services.

InternetGoogle -Proof PR? Andy Greenberg , 05.25.07, 6:00 AM ET Sue Scheff's business, Parents Universal Resource Experts, places troubled teens in reform schools--and generates a lot of controversy. Disgruntled clients have accused Scheff's company of sending kids to abusive programs, and the Web is full of complaints: A quick Google search used to reveal sites describing her as a "fraud," a "con artist" and a "crook." Google Scheff's name now, however, and the first few pages of results are far less controversial: They include Scheff's own sites about teen pregnancy , her upcoming book, and, until recently, recipes for broccoli casserole and pork chops . That last one might seem strange to Scheff's friends, who know she doesn't cook. "The truth is, if it doesn't go in the microwave, I don't make it," she admits. Related Stories: Grading Google So who wrote the cooking advice at sue- scheff .net? Not Sue Sche...

Web can ruin reputation with stroke of a key Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, May 6, 2007 The first postings appeared soon after Sue Scheff, who runs a Web-based referral service for parents with troubled teenagers, advised a woman from Louisiana to withdraw her twin sons from a boarding school in 2002. Scheff is "a con artist," "a crook" and "a fraud," according to the messages, which peppered blogs and Internet forums for parents of troubled teens. Soon, calls to Scheff's Parents Universal Resource Experts dropped by half, said Scheff, 45, who lives in Weston, Fla. "People would say: 'You know, I just read this about you online. How do I know I can trust you?' " Scheff, whose 6-year-old service usually draws a lot of traffic, is a victim of an emerging phenomenon: online smear campaigns, which can wreak havoc in the victims' professional and business lives at the touch of a few keystrokes. "It is happening ... o...

Why You Should Spy on Yourself By M.P. MCQUEEN April 21, 2007 More people are running background checks. On themselves. Used to be, the best way to pry into someone's past was to hire a gumshoe. However, today everyone from prospective employers to identity thieves -- and even first dates -- can do surprisingly sophisticated searches, looking for skeletons in your closet. Schools, too, are dialing up their snooping. Wharton and Columbia Business schools are using investigators to weed out fibs and padded resumes. Harvard recently added a former professional screener to its undergraduate admissions staff. In the past few years, 47 states, including Connecticut, Missouri, Nevada and Pennsylvania, have released records from some courts online, with case files ranging from gun possession to littering violations. Specialist companies like ChoicePoint Inc. and Reed Elsevier PLC's LexisNexis Group quickly mine and sell information like this to companies for a fee. HOW TO CHECK YOURSEL...

April 9, 2007 A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs By BRAD STONE Correction Appended Is it too late to bring civility to the Web? The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse. Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate. Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship. A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people hav...