In-House Counsel Guidebook: How to Handle Internet Defamation and Online Reputation Attacks August 2014 | Page 14

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sign a sworn affidavit stating they were not involved in the
post. We have found that guilty parties will refuse to sign
an affidavit. If they refuse, this provides the victim with
at least legitimate grounds to perform a forensic exam of
their devices carrying electronic information. Depending on
the circumstantial evidence, this may even provide them a
sufficient basis to name them as a defendant in a lawsuit.
E. There are a number of cyber harassment statutes in various
states around the country under which the police could use
their powers to obtain evidence proving who performed
online reputation attacks. However, based on our experience,
we have found that police rarely devote their resources to
brand and reputation attacks on businesses, instead believing
these issues are better addressed in the civil court system.
Accordingly, under the present system, the police typically
do not pursue these cases.

Options for Stopping Attacks, and Removing
Damaging Content
Convincing the website to voluntarily remove the harmful content:
Most websites have terms of service that very clearly prohibit certain
content (e.g. defamatory statements). Each website has its own way
of permitting people to report harmful content, and most allow for
the removal of the content if it can be shown that the terms or other
rules have been violated.
For example, it is a violation of Yelp’s Terms of Service and Content
Guidelines to write fake or defamatory reviews. Yelp encourages

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