Insurers Vow To Save Your E-Reputation

A new insurance product promises to protect families against damages to their e-reputation, a new but important concept in this era of fading privacy. But one writer wonders if this isn't all just a scare-mongering way to make new business.

First it was Swiss Life, now AXA has joined the party. Insurers have started selling e-reputation insurance products to protect your family's image on the internet. Called “Protection Famille Intégr@le”, AXA’s new product will protect you against identity theft, credit-card fraud, harm to your online reputation and e-commerce disputes. Both insurers use a dedicated e-reputation agency called the “Reputation Squad”, which will remove all problematic content, while providing psychological support and dealing with legal and administrative issues.

E-reputation has gone from “buzzword” to mainstream in just a few months. AXA and Swiss Life are playing on the anxiety and stress linked to the internet and social networks: the internet is rife with debauchery as well as all kinds of fraud and attacks on your moral - and of course financial - integrity.

Indeed, the internet, that place where hackers, pirates and intellectual property thieves roam freely, is also a place where your family can be attacked. Internet = danger: this is the message that the insurers want to get across to their clients.

In this hostile jungle, parents need to protect their children from the big bad wolves armed with smartphones and Photoshop, who won’t bat an eyelid as they publish inappropriate photos of our children. Luckily for them, AXA and Swiss Life, and surely many others to come are here to remind you of the dangers! Even if they’re just slightly exaggerated.