Be Careful What You Write For It Lives Forever

by Joel Shore

December 6, 2007 —

I was as bad as Bart Simpson. Like the little spiky yellow-haired terror of
TV, when I was 10 years old I made more than my fair share of crank phone calls.
Fortunately, the chuckles my friend Mike and I got from asking some poor old
lady if her washing machine was running ("well, lady, you better go catch
it!") or if her pipe-smoking husband had Sir Walter Raleigh in the can
("you better let him out!") were mere moments in time, here one instant
and gone forever the next. Not so today with e-mail, documents saved to a server,
and most recently, the blogosphere.

Send a message, draft a complaint letter, opine in a discussion forum, or rant
from atop a virtual soapbox -- even anonymously -- and what you say lives on
forever with your fingerprints all over. Say the wrong thing or say something
in the wrong way, and your IP address becomes a homing beacon, allowing the
authorities to swoop down and take you away.

Anonymous is no more, and neither is the Delete key.

The latest example is the Wisconsin school teacher who, believing that many
of his colleagues were overpaid and underworked, should be dealt with in a Columbine-like
manner. Whether this pillar of society was rightly arrested for unlawful use
of computerized communications systems or should have been shielded by First
Amendment rights is far beyond the scope of this column. For the moment, I'm
interested in the poster's belief that he was anonymous to all the world. He
wasn't.

This is no different than a memorable episode of the TV show "Forensic
Files" in which someone mailed a map printout anonymously to police in
St. Louis. In the episode, "X Marks the Spot," police and FBI special
agents determined from which well-known online map site the print had been generated
(by its overall look and style). Armed with a subpoena, it wasn't difficult
to examine the Web site's log files to see when that particular map had been
served up, and more important, the IP address to which it had been transmitted.
Arrest made, case closed.

Wherever we go, whatever we do, we're going to leave virtual breadcrumbs behind.
Even from a shared computer in a far-away city, it isn't that difficult to match
up an e-mailer's or blogster's travel itinerary. Anonymous is no more.

We've seen this multiple times in a pure business setting, too. Disgruntled
employee posts disparaging remarks about the boss and eventually is found out.
Even the CEO of Whole Foods, it turns out, was caught by the Federal Trade Commission
posting messages in a Yahoo discussion forum bashing a competitor in an effort
to drive down its stock price. Why? To slash Wild Oat's market value thus making
an acquisition by Whole Foods less expensive. Nice work, genius.

Back when I was reporting technology news, I'd sometimes get an irate phone
call after a story ran from someone who was quoted -- accurately -- but who
was enraged that the quote was part of the story. "If you don't want to
see it, then don't say it," summed up my explanation, occasionally followed
by "hey, it's a weekly publication and this week's issue will be in the
trash in a few days." Not any more.

With data mining, server backups, electronic document storage systems, and
yes, the likes of Google and Windows Live Search, nothing ever disappears. Be
careful what you write, for it's sure to show up years down the road when you
least expect it.

You've seen the TV commercials: A diamond is forever. So, too, is e-mail.

ITworld.com