A while back I brought news about a company and website called Unvarnished. They were bringing forward this terrible idea forward that people should be able to anonymously review other people. Despite the chorus of boos they were met with, Unvarnished has captured the attention of the press and of bloggers, and raked in a reported $1.2 million in investments.

The self-described reputation management site, which allows professionals to anonymously submit reviews on their peers, has just renamed its site to “Honestly” and raised $1.2 million from several high-profile firms including First Round Capital,  Ron Conway’s SV Angel, and Charles River Ventures. The round also includes individual investors, like Joshua Schachter, Travis Kalanick, and Richard Chen.

An early round of investments like that could help Unvarnished/Honestly go a long way online. The idea, most online reputation management specialists maintain, is a bad one–but it continues to capture the attention of various investors and press outlets.

Online review sites have become a problem for many industries–including hospitality, restaurant, and virtually any other service industry. It is a good thing that when restaurants have bad service, they are outed–this is an appropriate use of reviewing sites.

However, there is certainly a different way that online review sites get utilized. Much of the time, an online review website is used as a weapon against a particular business. Reviews are often so scathing that they border on delusional or unreasonable. Things that people would never say in public, they are comfortable saying behind the shroud of anonymity. This is the ugly side of online review sites.

This, of course, has a major effect on the industry of reputation management–in which a company or person tries to shield their reputation, online, from nefarious comments from business rivals, disgruntled employees, or random online lurkers.