Of course, the first order of business in such suits is to locate the posters and convert the "John Does" into real names belonging to real people -- who are learning the hard way that anonymity online doesn't translate to identity-protection offline.

In the latest such case, Gary Dale Hoke was tracked down and arrested last Thursday after allegedly posting a fabricated story that his employer, PairGain Technologies, was being acquired by an Israeli high-tech firm. The "news," posted on a Web page hosted by Angelfire, had the look of a Bloomberg News story and was hyped on Yahoo message boards -- leading to a dramatic rise in the company's stock price.

Hoke registered for Yahoo and Angelfire under an assumed name, according to reports of the complaint against him. Investigators apparently traced him through his computers' Internet protocol addresses, which Lycos (the owner of Angelfire) and Yahoo disclosed under court order. A rash of similar subpoenas has been served on message-board hosts of late. And most of the companies routinely respond by handing over whatever data a judge thinks might help identify the accused.

To date, the vast majority of these subpoenas have gone unchallenged. That means that well before posters are found guilty of any misbehavior, and often before they even know that their identity is being sought, they lose their anonymity through a judge's order. "The company could [contest the subpoenas]," says Yahoo spokeswoman Diane Hunt, "but it's not really the business we're in." And, as any lawyer will tell you, it's expensive to challenge subpoenas, especially when they're arriving by the dozen.

"Half the world is subpoenaing Yahoo," says an attorney who has been involved in similar cases. "They have a program of complying" with such subpoenas -- which makes it easier for plaintiffs to track down personal information. The company won't disclose the number of subpoenas it has received, but the half-dozen cases that have made it into the news recently -- including suits by Raytheon, Shoney's and Wade Cooke Financial -- indicate a steady flow.

At Lycos, too, subpoenas arrive on "pretty close to a regular basis," says spokesman Brian Payea. Ditto for America Online. And at Go2Net Inc., which owns Silicon Investor, a "busy month" means as many as 20 subpoenas from the SEC and another half as many from civil suits involving postings to Silicon Investor, says general counsel Ethan Caldwell.

Almost uniformly, these message-board hosting companies post privacy policies stating that they won't share any information about members -- unless compelled to do so by law. But once served with a valid subpoena, many have no standard procedures to represent the interests of the anonymous poster -- nor does the law require such policies.

Next page | Will AOL and Yahoo tell the feds who you are?