Rock Ridge Resources, Inc. (RRRI)

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How Can a Company Unmask an Anonymous Author

How can companies determine the identity of an anonymous author?

Obtaining information from a sponsor can be difficult.

It's difficult to find someone at the sponsor to contact. Most sponsors provide only e-mail address contacts on their Web site - not contact names or phone numbers. See more @ contacts at sponsors.

Since time likely will be "of the essence" for companies seeking to remove a message, e-mail contact information is not particularly useful - particularly since it can take several hours or even days (if at all) for a sponsor to respond to an e-mail.

In addition, most sponsors are hesitant to divulge any information - unless a company first obtains a subpoena. Sponsors normally don't voluntarily reveal whatever information they have about an author or a message - because they take great pains to limit their liability for the content of the messages posted on their boards - and they fear that an author will allege a breach of privacy if they turn over this information.

Sponsors may be even more hesitant to divulge information after a recent lawsuit. In May 2000, an anonymous author filed a John Doe lawsuit against Yahoo! for responding to a subpoena for information about him in another lawsuit. Yahoo! provided no notice of the subpoena to the John Doe before providing his personal information. The author had posted messages criticizing his employer and was fired after Yahoo! complied with the subpoena. This case settled with the terms of the settlement under seal.

Source: The May 2000 lawsuit over Yahoo! complying with a subpoena is Acquacool v. Yahoo! - the complaint can be found at http://techlawjournal.com/courts/aquacool/20000511com.htm.





Can a company convince a sponsor to voluntarily reveal an author's identity?

It's very unlikely that a company will voluntarily reveal an author's identity - particularly after authors have begun to sue sponsors who have turned over identifying information (unless law enforcement officials make the request).

These lawsuits have been filed even though the sponsors were responding to a subpoena. Authors have sued because they were not informed by the sponsor of the subpoena's existence and did not get an opportunity to quash it to preserve their anonymity. See more @ do sponsors cooperate with subpoena requests.

If a company can provide a legitimate reason, the sponsor arguably has a basis to demonstrate a good faith belief that disclosure of an author's identity to the company was acceptable - either in the absence of a subpoena or to comply with the legal process.

Despite having complete discretion, most sponsors require that companies obtain a subpoena before they will cooperate with efforts to unmask an author. Based on recent lawsuits filed by anonymous authors against sponsors for revealing their identity without informing them first (even though they were responding to subpoenas), it's unlikely that sponsors will turn over any information about an author without a subpoena. See more @ sponsors being sued for identifying authors.

Note that it may not be a good idea to send a cease and desist letter to a sponsor urging them to remove a message - it's unlikely that this can accomplish much over a phone call and it's possible that the letter will end up on the message board itself and cause embarrassment (not posted by the sponsor, but these things somehow seem to leak out).

Source: An example of a sponsor voluntarily taking action is Yahoo Finance's process to block spam from its message boards as noted in "Yahoo Curbs Message Board Spam," c/netnews.com (July 27, 1999).





What alternatives does a company have to contacting a sponsor to unmask an author?

Cybersleuth - or hire an investigative firm to do it for the company.

A company may be able to track an author using publicly available clues. These clues can be derived from various sources, such as:

the nature of the message itself (i.e. quasi-handwriting analysis based on the terminology in the message),
through data mining (e.g. reviewing prior messages created by the same author for identification information), or
other electronic traces left behind - such as engaging the author in an online dialogue on a message board to reveal clues about the author's identity.
None of these methods rely on illegal activity, such as hacking.

Once a company unmasks an author, it can deal directly with the author and may be able to avoid having to file a subpoena - which significantly reduces the risk of media attention and adverse legal consequences.

Source: Investigation firms are springing up to help companies unmask authors, including the Internet Crimes Group (www.internetcrimesgroup.com) which was founded by an ex-member of the FBI. Depending on the complexity of a search, Internet Crimes Group charges between $2.5k-$5k to track an author and typically can turn around a request in several weeks.

http://www.realcorporatelawyer.com/faqs/MsgBoards.html#c