June 30, 2000
At Silicon Investor a Bug Posts
Identity Behind the Pseudonym
By CARRIE LEE
WSJ.COM
Ever wondered who's behind an online pseudonym? Thursday may have
been your night on Silicon Investor.
Late that evening, some posters on the
popular message boards were dismayed to
find their log-in identifications -- often their
real names and normally kept private --
were inadvertently showing up on posted messages instead of their online
aliases. It was one of many technical glitches that plagued Silicon Investor
this week.
Silicon Investor (www.siliconinvestor.com) is a haven for the anonymous
exchange of insider information, management critiques and hot-stock tips.
Based in Seattle, the unit of Go2Net has more than 300,000 subscribers
who pay $120 a year to post messages on the site, but anyone can read
messages for free. The site gets an average of 20,000 posts a day.
Company spokeswoman Jill Munden says the problem arose briefly
Thursday night. The root of the trouble was an upgrade of Silicon
Investor's database, which has since been fixed, she says.
"We immediately fixed the problem and have
technology teams in place to ensure the
continued performance of Silicon Investor,"
Ms. Munden says. "We have checked or
adjusted all messages posted during the
affected time period to ensure that only the
user aliases are displayed."
But the company wasn't able to fix the mistake before it caused
consternation among members. "I don't worry about my log-in ID showing
because my [alias] is my real name, but there are people who use aliases
for legitimate reasons: They don't want their boss to know they are posting
or something," says Dennis Roth, a Silicon Investor member who manages
his portfolio for a living from Landover, Md.
The Silicon Investor Web site had a range of other technical problems
because of the upgrade. Some of them continued into Friday, although
none appeared to be as serious as the log-in ID problem.
Some members received an error message when they attempted to post.
Other users of the site were told that the message they were seeking
couldn't be found, or they were brought to a different message altogether.
Some users complained that the key intended to take them to previous
messages didn't work.
One member complained that people who chose to respond to messages
were given the opportunity to edit the messages to which they responded,
effectively changing what someone else had written.
Ms. Munden says she wasn't aware of this problem. She added that the
glitches didn't allow users to access members' account information.
Passwords are required to access member's account data, and no
passwords were divulged, she says. As a fee-based site, Silicon Investor
has access to users' credit-card numbers and other personal information.
The snafu became a popular topic on Silicon Investor's boards, where
many members voiced their complaints and document problems. Two of
the boards created Friday morning included "SI is broken - Post bugs
here," and "SI is collapsing - Black hole."
"Am I the only one having trouble with SI since they 'upgraded' earlier
tonight? Several subjects (including this one) have dropped off my
'SubjectMarks' list," wrote one member shortly after midnight on
Thursday, referring to a feature that lets users keep lists of frequently read
boards. "All kinds of errors this morning as well as missing messages all
over the place," posted another early Friday morning.
Silicon Investor has been upgrading its database to accommodate a new
software system in recent weeks. The site informed its members that it
would be offline for brief, nonmarket periods during the weeks of June 19
and June 26.
Write to Carrie Lee at: carrie.lee@wsj.com |
