DENVER, Jan. 17, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- InternetReputation.com announces a new program for 2013 designed at helping companies and individuals combat Internet slander.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation defines defamation as, "… a false and unprivileged statement of fact that is harmful to someone's reputation, and published 'with fault,' meaning as a result of negligence or malice." Most readers would call statements like this "slander," and they know they can devastate reputations and gut a company's ability to make money. InternetReputation.com is proud to announce a new repair solution for people who have been the targets of smear campaigns like this.

"In the past, when people were targeted by a slander campaign, their only recourse involved a court case, and sometimes, those cases were successful," says a representative from InternetReputation.com. A 2006 case from Louisiana made headlines, for example, when a jury awarded a woman $11.3 million after a dispute lead to negative postings on a popular website. "In this case, the reviewer used words like 'crook' and 'fraud' to describe this person, and it was incredibly damaging to her reputation. Comments like this are clearly slanderous, so it's no wonder that she won her case, says a representative from InternetReputation.com.

Court cases can be quite expensive, however, and they can have reputation consequences that are hard to repair.

"Long court cases mean long delays, and the damning comments are likely to stay in place while the weeks and months stretch on," says a representative from InternetReputation.com. "People could face extreme reputation damage due to delays like this, and not everyone can afford to hire a lawyer and keep that lawyer in place for months or years in order to fight a defamation case. Even those who could afford to pay a lawyer at the beginning of the trial could have trouble paying legal bills at the end, when the reputation damage has made it hard for people to find work or keep their jobs."

Not all court cases end up in favor of the plaintiff, either. "A Texas couple was awarded a groundbreaking settlement in a case in 2012, but that verdict was overturned and the judge actually ordered the plaintiffs to pay the legal costs of the people they sued for defamation," says the InternetReputation.com representative. "Cases like this make it clear that people really can suffer serious problems in court."

The experts at InternetReputation.com point out that most online slander comments violate the terms of use of the sites upon which they're posted. As a result, these comments can quickly and easily be removed.

"Pointing out how the comments violate the terms of use, and showing that we're willing to litigate if we need to, is often all that's needed to remove entire segments of comments," says an InternetReputation.com representative. "We've developed multiple relationships with the administrators of popular sites, and we know just what to do to make sure that comments are removed quickly and completely. We can also use our talented writers to flood the internet with positive articles, making the negative comments harder to find, if they're found at all."

To find out more, visit www.internetreputation.com.

Media Contact: Gary Bloom InternetReputation.com, 1-800-758-9012, info@internetreputation.com

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SOURCE InternetReputation.com