Trenchcoat Mafia Reverberates On Web

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April 22, 1999 (10:19 AM EDT)

By Malcolm Maclachlan,

Tragedy equals opportunity for some Netizens.

Two teenagers opened fire on Tuesday at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., leaving 15 dead and more than 20 injured.

In the wake of the shooting spree by Columbine students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Web was abuzz. Numerous hoax postings about the killings had gone online, even before the hours-long rampage was over.

Meanwhile, amid evidence that one of the killers publicized his intentions online, a leading Web-filtering company came out with a guide for helping parents monitor their children's behavior on the Web.

Filtering software company Solid Oak Software was seeking to use the incident to educate parents.

"The more news I watched today, the more implications there are about how the Internet was involved," said Marc Kanter, vice president of marketing at Solid Oak.

Mainstream news outlets have reported both suspects had America Online websites that espoused violence and made references to April 20 as Adolph Hitler's birthday. One site also reportedly included information on making bombs, Kanter said.

The suspects used guns and homemade bombs in the attack. AOL spokeswoman Kim McCreery confirmed Wednesday that the company had shut down at least one account in the wake of the attack and was in talks with the FBI about turning over some user information.

Solid Oak's site is not an attempt to sell more copies of its Cybersitter filtering software, Kanter said. Rather, he said, it gives tips on how to keep up with the children's behavior online -- whether they are using filtering software or not. For instance, it tells how to search the cache in both Netscape and Microsoft browsers to see what sites they have gone to.

"Kids have 100 times more knowledge than their parents do," Kanter said.

Some Web users were trying to mine the tragedy for traffic. Within hours of the incident, two separate parties had registered the terms "Trenchcoat Mafia" and "trenchcoatmafia" -- the name of the high school clique Harris and Klebold reportedly belonged to -- through the RealNames service. Operated by Centraal, RealNames lets users go to specific sites without using URLs.

As of last night, anyone searching the former term would have been taken to a GeoCities site whose content had nothing to do with the incident. The automated service lets anyone subscribe to any available name they want as long as it isn't a generic term such as "cars" or "music." Centraal then reviews the registered terms and turns off the ones they deem inappropriate. The GeoCities keyword was turned off within after about 14 hours.

"Someone opportunistically subscribed to the name in hope of driving some traffic," said Centraal CEO Keith Teare. "This is where our trust system is open to abuse."

The name "Trenchcoat Mafia" was registered by ZipNow.com, a hosting service. A memorial site for the victims was placed at the destination address. Centraal asked ZipNow to change the keyword to "Trenchcoat Mafia Memorial," which they did, Teare said.