Character Assassination (Revised)

According to Wikipedia, character assassination is the act or attempt to tarnish a person's reputation which may involve exaggeration or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person. Sometimes, false character labeling is also used to criticize a company and its services by targeting its Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Regretfully, I observed a case of character assassination on the website of an identity protection company describing Mr. Todd Davis, the CEO of LifeLock (another identity protection company), as "The Worst Person". I immediately had some thoughts as I was reading the article which I thought I should bring up. My decision to bring up this observation is purely due to the fact that I felt a deep hatred embedded in the article toward this person whom I don't even know. I wondered, what can cause the writer to hate this person so much? Is it because of jealousy, love, or rejection of some sort?

First, I think everyone has the right to criticize the services and products of a company if they are flawed and harmful but labeling a CEO as the worst person is somewhat premature and wrong in my opinion. I have to admit that I have never met Mr. Davis nor did I approve his company’s original marketing strategy for promoting its services which I have brought up in my writings many times, however, nothing can justify so much hatred and false character labeling. A security professional who responded to my online comments against character assassination, even suggested that I was paid by LifeLock for writing this article and that he pukes every time he sees that CEO on TV. How do people even get to this kind of hatred and allow themselves to so easily make false accusations?

Second, when the author labels this CEO as the "worst person", I’m not sure what category he’s referring to. I’m sure there are many categories in which some of us can be the worst person, whether it’s character judgment or cooking.

Third, although LifeLock settled with the FTC and some States for exaggerating the usefulness of its services and failing to protect consumer information in its possession, there are many other companies which are also misleading consumers by exaggerating about the usefulness of their services, either directly or indirectly, or planting baits in their marketing communications. Just because they have not been sued yet or settled with the government doesn’t mean their services are flawless or that their CEO has the highest integrity. I don't mean to justify the original flawed services of LifeLock and its exaggerated marketing campaign, but why do we need to keep beating the person who is down and bleeding? Why do we need to abuse LifeLock's public admission to wrongdoing, forced or otherwise, to further prove a point. It's done.

Fourth, the article further stressed on the flawed identity protection services of LifeLock pointing out that Mr. Davis himself, who openly disclosed his social security number in his ad campaigns, has been the victim of identity theft more than once and LifeLock lied about the number of his identity theft incidents. As far as I know, we do not have detailed information about his identity theft cases to conclude that all his identity theft cases were the result of his social security number disclosure. We all know that identity theft is not fully preventable in the current circumstances, and many of us have already been victims of this crime. However, by suggesting that his reckless posting of his social security number in public places is the root cause for all his identity theft cases is somewhat premature in my opinion because identity theft can happen in many areas without the use of a social security number.

I’m not sure whether character assassination is legal under the freedom of speech or not but I believe that a CEO’s character assassination and labeling as the "worst person" based on the flawed services and misleading marketing strategy of his company is wrong. And, although the article dismisses the claims made by Mr. Davis about his company changing the industry, I have to admit that the automation of initial fraud alert renewals every 90 days was a unique idea for its time. I'm not a big fan of fraud alerts because they don't work as they are ignored by businesses, but the idea of automating a piece of legislation was unique.

Like I said, I don't know Mr. Davis, never met him and do not get paid by LifeLock for this article. I would have written this article to raise awareness against character assassination and such a deep hatred for anyone, period. My hope is that we can all work together to innovate and advance the identity protection industry for effectively and efficiently addressing identity theft root causes and consequences.