To us it’s personal.
To understand it better, here is a brief background of our company. In 2009 while at home with my children, a group of individuals broke into our home. They threatened to harm us all if I did not hand them a large amount of cash. I recognized one of the attackers and reported him to the police the moment had they left our house.
Although they were caught within an hour of the break-in, it took 6 months of legal trials, police interviews and court appearances to get to a verdict. To my utter shock and surprise, they were sentenced to just 6 months of house arrest after they pleaded guilty.
The experience was so painful and frightening, that I feared for the safety of my children and had them fly to Dubai to live with my Ex-wife. In a matter of months, my life had turned upside down. The pressure and the shock of the attack also resulted in a heart attack.
Subsequently, I lost all interest in living in the UK and wanted to be back near my family in a safe environment. Having lost everything I had worked for and built I left for Dubai to start a new life.
Life was very tough. I had to start everything all over again. As a sales and marketing consultant in a new country, no one knew me and I had zero track record. I was networking in the early hours of the morning, consulting 7 days a week while trying to pay the school fees, rent a house and build a business in Dubai. I was starting my life from scratch again at the age of 44!
During this time, some clients who I had met and liked what I had to say and offer and had committed to working with me started to cancel their commitment. I asked them for reasons, but they wouldn’t tell me. It was killing me inside.
This continued until one day my 13-year-old son called me to look at his computer screen. To my horror, someone had opened various defaming web pages about me. These sites were under my name and had my photos all over them. They were all filled with lies and false allegations which are too hurtful to repeat here.
They had also opened a Twitter page and Facebook page. They were stalking me. Everything I posted they would copy and turn into something negative and disgusting. I was victimised again by these people.
I knew who it was. It was the same men who were at home sipping tea while on house arrest. It was the people who were guilty of attacking me at my own home. But I couldn’t prove it.
I had no idea what to do. I contacted the UK Police and they couldn’t do anything without evidence. I contacted my local MP in the UK who told me that people were stalking him too and if there was any way I could help him. I tried contacting the hosting companies, but they wouldn’t share the name of the owners of the domain names.
I had no money to take this any further. BUT, above everything, my children were plagued with these online activities. They had to read lies and hear horrible things said about their dad every day. Even some of their friends had seen these sites and rumours had started to spread at school about me and our family.
It took me over a year and everything I had earned to find out how to legally remove these false websites sites. I learned how to get social media companies to remove the damaging pages. I made sure that I was protected against all future cyber attacks legally and above all by working with the UK government to implement the European Legislation to prevent cybercrime.
Although this period of my life was extremely painful and stressful, it helped me become somewhat of an expert in the business of reputation management.
The numbers are staggering. There are around 4 million people in the US alone who are stalked and bullied online. Hundreds of thousands of businesses and their directors are falsely targeted online- be it lies and damaging reviews or just outright “false news”.
However, the notion of what is online will stay online is WRONG.
With our newly acquired knowledge on reputation management, we have since set up a very successful division in our company Be Unique group. Here, we help victims of cybercrime to free themselves, their business and their lives from these illicit activities.
We have happy clients whom we had helped to be free again and start their lives without any online obstacles stopping them. Along the way, we have built lifelong friends.
The criminals are also getting smarter but so are we. Through constant education and as a top Google Premier Partner we work closely with search and social media companies to clear the names of innocent people. Our legal department has qualified lawyers who ensure that we are supported by the country’s legal system no matter where we are in the world.
This business is my passion. We believe that it is our mission is to help all the innocent people and companies who do not deserve to be damaged by this crime.
Dariush Soudi | CEO