My Story: From a Dot-Com Bust to Stanford B-School & Authorship

4)   Ask for content to be removed. If you find content you don’t like—whether it’s embarrassing, personal, vulgar, false, or negative in some other way—the first step is to task that it be removed. I can tell you, based on the hundreds of take-down requests that we received at JuicyCampus, being kind, reasonable and sincere will be much more effective than being mean, threatening or aggressive.

5)   Update and strengthen your passwords. All too often on college campuses, students will think that it is funny to log in to a friend’s Facebook account and make inappropriate or awkward status updates, or comments to that person’s friends and families. This creates a headache for the student whose account was used, and it may have a lasting effect. A strong password contains a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, along with at least one symbol. Passwords you use often should be changed at least every six months.

6)   Set up a Google Alert for your name. Setting one up for your name and for any common misspellings of your name is a good way to keep on top of any new online content associated with your name.

7)   Claim your name. Register your name as a username on all of the most popular sites that allow profiles or user-generated content. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are obvious examples, but what about Reddit, Flickr and Hulu, or some obscure but still popular FriendFeed, TripIt and UStream? By securing your name as a username, you make it harder for someone else to make you look bad.

DON’T MISS: MY STORY–FROM A DOT-COM BUST TO HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL or MY STORY: SOCIAL NETWORK–FROM THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN