An excellent article at Knowledge Is Power about using a blog to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about competitors and manage the spin on news about its rivals while usually reporting positively about your own employer.
Another post about Black PR defines this as distinct from a disinformation campaign.
The US Government Accountability Office says that stolen sensitive military items have been purchased by undercover government officials on Craigslist and eBay. However, this is like the kettle calling the pot black. The same subcommittee determined that the Defense Department sold chemical protective suits and biological warfare laboratory equipment to the public.
While it is easy to see an element of fear mongering in this, it does remind us that private sector businesses should be checking eBay and Craigslist for their own product and counterfeits. Doing so may reveal a problem with theft, grey marketing, or counterfeiting.
An article about Online Reputation Monitoring for Competitive Intelligence has let the cat out of the bag — there are investigative tools to get more from the Internet than you will find with simple search strings.
There are tools for searching Google to uncover details about your company that you would never think of publishing freely, tools for searching social networks to locate competitive intelligence information from employees or ex-employees, tools for digging into content to locate copyright materials and tools for conducting linguistic scans for flagging up dirty words associated with your products or derogatory associations with your brand.
