If you want to be online, you have to be protective of your personal identity. Everyone knows that, especially when it comes to account numbers and passwords.

But sometimes you need a good offense in addition to a good defense.

Recently a frustrated school teacher contacted us because of her listing in our salary database. She wasn't necessarily upset that we published the database, making available the salaries of employees at public schools. The problem was that her entry in the database was the top search result in Google for anyone searching on her name.

I explained to her that the uniqueness of her name combined with a lack of other web references to her name meant the computers and algorithms at Google had no choice but to return the salary database record. And there was nothing we can do to manipulate Google's results (because if we could ...).

So her best plan of action would be to create a web site, a blog - anything with her name and content that would WANT people to find. Over time she could bury the salary database listing in the search results with this new content.

Recently I had to take action in my own defense, after a satirical obituary suggested I met my premature demise over the weekend. Hopefully a comment on that blog - and a reference on this one - will set the record straight.