Eliminalia is a specialized Spanish company, according to its company slogan, in ‘Erase your past’. Based in different cities such as Barcelona or Kiev, it responds to a market demand from many of its users, eliminating all kinds of articles, photographs or messages on social networks from past times that could call into question its professionalism, integrity and reputation.
Today, reputation and digital identity are more relevant than physical. And it is necessary to take into account that for companies, when hiring someone, it is essential to monitor the candidate’s social media profile. Without going any further, this is a matter that torments different famous personalities, since there is always a user who repeats a tweet or message on social networks from years ago to now question their professionalism and mentality.
Eliminalia makes it possible to end this problem. The company is responsible for carrying out a rigorous search on the Internet of all information related to your client and remove any kind of negative information. However, the latest investigation carried out by The Guardian showed that deceptive and immoral methods were being used.
Thus, the objective would be to impersonate third parties, such as media organizations, and present false copyright complaints to search engines like Google to get the information removed. Eliminalia would have resorted to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to delete articles from the Internet accusing them of perjury.
Eliminalia’s services currently support thousands of customers around the world, registering in its cache some 50,000 internal files that explain their procedure at all times. In the end, they don’t have to be famous people, but users who want to eliminate unfortunate incidents from the past to start a new life as a couple or professionally.
Where is the limit?
That is the question that many of those who have questioned ask themselves. the integrity of Eliminalia. Many of the company’s clients were people accused or convicted of criminal offenses related to drug trafficking, fraud or sexual violations. The company defends itself by ensuring that it obtains results based on the ‘right to be forgotten’ of the European Union, as long as the users have overcome the crime committed.
When The Guardian brought to light these methods used, after being shared by Forbidden Stories (a French non-profit organization whose mission is to follow the work of journalists who have been murdered, threatened or imprisoned), alarm bells went off around the world and Eliminalia’s reputation took a nosedive.
The essence of Eliminalia
Founded in 2013 by the Spanish Diego Didacmanaged to establish itself as an innovative company with a fairly wide client portfolio distributed among more than 50 countries. Between the years 2015 and 2021 she would work for more than 1,500 people and companieshighlighting a Swiss bank accused of breaching money laundering regulation.
Also deserving special mention are a slum landlord convicted in the UK of offenses relating to abandoned properties, a Turkish biotech tycoon accused of hiring a hit man to take down a business partner and a Venezuelan businessman implicated in tax and related evasions. with works of art.
Eliminalia’s method was clear, take down contracts, emails, client details, fake legal letters and copies of negative articles. They were charged up to 100,000 euros, although most paid only a few thousand dollars for a single service. However, the company has always remained silent in response to the numerous accusations received.
What do your customers think?
It is the case of Hernan Gabriel Westmann, accused by the Argentine authorities in 2017 for a crime of money laundering for the Sinaloa drug cartel. He assured the Washington Post that he was innocent and that the charges had been filed by the government of Mauricio Macri in retaliation for having done business with his left-wing predecessor, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. However, he assures that he did not know how Eliminalia ended with the negative articles.
Qurium, a Swedish non-profit company, detected 600 sites with similar articles on banal topics such as dogs, cars and sports that came to replace the negatives of some of Eliminalia’s clients. Thus, those fake spam articles end up pushing the negative ones down, making them harder to find.
In the end, Eliminalia’s strategy is none other than to deceive Google to manipulate the content in which its client is involved and wash its image, although all following full transparency, according to the company itself. Everything indicates that Eliminalia will change its name to iData Protection in official records, perhaps also for washing his image in the face of certain criticisms for illegitimate actions.
