On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog or the Pope ...hee hee...
Of course, nobody knows if you are a cat either, except maybe by how you use the mouse.
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Who Is "Robert Klingler"?
On the trail of the man who duped Slate.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Tuesday, March 12, 2002, at 7:46 PM ET
In the famous New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner, a dog seated in front of a PC turns to his canine colleague and boasts, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
Although dogs have not logged onto the Internet in the numbers Web visionaries predicted in the early '90s, Steiner's lesson still stands: You can never be too sure that your fascinating e-mail correspondent isn't a barking imposter. Last week, Slate got taken by an Internet dog when it published the diary of "Robert Klingler," an individual who claimed in e-mails and on the telephone to be the CEO of BMW's North American operations.
Slate published two installments of Klingler's projected weeklong diary before discovering his ruse on Tuesday, March 5. When told by BMW that no Robert Klingler worked there, Slate disavowed both diary entries, and I published this mea culpa, "Slate Gets Duped." I explained that Klingler had "spoofed" his e-mail address to make it appear that it had originated from the car manufacturer. (For more on how to detect "e-mail spoofing," see this week's "Webhead" column, by Bill Barnes.)
In "Slate Gets Duped," I promised to investigate the hoax and report back. After interviews with scores of sources and vigorous surfing of the Web and other databases, I can't tell you with absolute certainty who Robert Klingler is. There's an excellent chance he doesn't even exist. It could be that one or two—or who knows how many—people might be behind the scenes, conjuring Klingler into existence, or that the people linked to Klingler in this piece are themselves the victims of a hoax. This is my account, but I will add to it if I learn more.
Slate believes that it first encountered the man doing business as Robert Klingler through "The Fray," the discussion area where Slate readers and writers mix it up. On Oct. 31, 2001, Slate "Fray" editor Moira Redmond received an e-mail signed by "Rob Klingler" in which he responded to the Slate "Diary" Redmond was writing that week ...