Is it illegal to damage someone's reputation?

Damaging someone's reputation is not itself unlawful

A truthful account of a bad experience can end a business. A public record can follow someone for twenty years. Neither is unlawful, and the law is not indifferent to that outcome. It has simply decided that the alternative, letting people suppress accurate information because it hurt them, costs more.

So the first question is never how much damage was done. It is whether a false statement of fact was involved.

What happened	Is it actionable?
A customer describes a genuinely bad experience	No. Truthful, and a statement about their own experience
Someone calls your work overpriced and disappointing	Generally no. Opinion, not a checkable claim of fact
Someone writes that you were convicted of a crime you were not	Potentially yes. A false, checkable statement of fact
A news outlet reports a public record accurately	No, even if the record is old and the coverage is unwelcome
An anonymous account fabricates an incident that did not happen	Potentially yes, subject to proving the elements
Someone repeatedly targets you with threats and doxxing	Possibly criminal, on a separate track from defamation

When it becomes defamation liability

The elements are a false statement purporting to be fact, publication of that statement to a third person, fault amounting to at least negligence, and damages. Cornell Law's definition of defamation sets them out, along with the point that governs most disputes: truth is widely accepted as a complete defence to all defamation claims.

Public officials and public figures carry a heavier burden. They have to prove actual malice, meaning knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth, and prove it by clear and convincing evidence.

Truth as a defence, and the limits of opinion protection

This is worth stating flatly, because it is the point most often glossed over by people selling removal. If the statement is true, the claim fails. It does not matter that it was published to hurt you, that the person had a grudge, or that the consequences were severe.

Courts also apply substantial truth: minor inaccuracies that do not change the gist of the statement generally do not defeat the defence. A review that gets a date wrong while accurately describing what happened is still, in substance, true.

The practical consequence is that most reputation problems are not legal problems. A true but damaging article, a true but harsh review, an accurate court record: none of these has a legal removal route, which is why the honest work here is suppression, correction and context rather than deletion. That distinction is covered on our page about search suppression.

Civil vs criminal: which system you are actually in

Defamation in the United States is a civil matter. You sue; you do not press charges, and the police will not investigate it. Filing means starting a lawsuit, which follows the process set out in how civil cases work in the federal courts, though most defamation claims are brought in state court.

A minority of states still have criminal defamation statutes on the books. They are rarely used, several have been narrowed or struck down on constitutional grounds, and no one should plan around them.

The platform is not the defendant

A common instinct is to sue the review site, the forum, or the search engine. Section 230 generally blocks that: a service is not treated as the publisher of what its users post, so the claim belongs against the author. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's analysis of Section 230 explains the mechanism and the exceptions. Platform policy, which is a separate thing entirely, is usually the faster door and costs nothing.

Harassment and doxxing are a different question

Some conduct that damages a reputation is unlawful for reasons unrelated to defamation: stalking, credible threats, extortion, publishing intimate images without consent, impersonation, and coordinated harassment. These can be criminal, they are handled by law enforcement rather than by a civil suit, and platforms treat them as priority removal categories with faster timelines.

If what is happening to you is in that group, do not route it through a defamation analysis. Report it as what it is.

Can I be sued for leaving a bad review?

Anyone can be sued by anyone. Whether the suit goes anywhere is a different question, and the answer is usually no when the review is a truthful account of your own experience or a clearly expressed opinion.

Three things weigh in a reviewer's favour. Truth is a complete defence. Many states have anti-SLAPP statutes that allow early dismissal of suits aimed at protected speech, sometimes with the costs shifted to the person who filed. And using an unfounded legal threat to get a review removed is itself a violation of the FTC's review rule, which is covered on our page about the FTC review rule.

If you are on the other side of this, holding a review you believe is fabricated, the sequence that works is to preserve the evidence, report the policy violation, and get a clear read on whether a claim actually exists before spending anything. Sorting that is the first thing a reputation audit does.

Nothing here is legal advice, and defamation is state law that varies in its elements, defences and deadlines. Cornell's entry linked above is the primary starting point, and a lawyer licensed where you live is the only reliable read on your own facts.