The NYT Bits Blog has posted Part I: Answers to Questions About Internet Privacy.

Jen King at the UC Berkeley School of Information pointed me to this specific answer:

First, encourage your local court to join the privacy movement. Second, build a positive online presence that will push your private financial information off the first page of Google search. The majority of Web searchers don’t look past the first page of Google, so if you can control the first page, then you can limit how many people see your foreclosure. Start by building personal profiles on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and other popular communities. You may also consider building a personal blog. Arrange to have your name in the URL of each Web property to maximize its “Google juice”. Maybe join a site that lists people in your industry or profession. By carefully linking these sites to one another, you can often make these positive profiles come up at the top of a search for your name.

Many years ago at the 2003 Blackhat conference a presentation was given on how to remove all traces of an identity on the Internet. It was great stuff but clearly a task for Sisyphus.

From that point on I have actively advocated that people who want privacy should actually push and manage information online in the same way celebrities and politicians manage theirs. Some choose to fight and erase objectionable traces but this will eventually fail. Most create press kits and photos, with careful appearances, for public consumption. Both face the threat of paparazzi and tabloids but the latter group seems to have found the least-cost and most secure path (i.e. data integrity).

It is much harder to remove everything than to bury something, a lesson also learned from digital forensics.

The best strategy is to build up online reputation and credibility — pro-actively create a reflection of true persona that can withstand an accusation, incident or even a campaign…and on that note how many know the ruling on Arthur Andersen was actually overturned?