I agree 100% with the thought that one should not expect online or even over the phone to be completely private. I think the people who air out their whole social lives on sites like facebook are nuts. But that doesn't excuse what these people did. If you happened to park your car in a "questionable" neighborhood and then it gets stolen, I'm guessing you'd be pretty pissed at whoever did it. So what then? Do you just tell yourself, "well, it's my own fault for parking there"? I doubt it. If you knew who did it, you'd probably want to kick the guy's *ss or have him held accountable in some way. So, I can't blame anybody for being outraged at these peoples' conduct. You're right that it's not shocking to hear that privacy has been violated over the internet. Nothing new about that. But look at the extent these guys went to with hundreds of fake accounts and countless fake posts. Now, how are people supposed to differentiate fact from fiction when they read stuff on agoracom? In other words, people thought this site was one of the few places they could come to to take part in/read real, intelligent discussions about their investments. Now, for all they know, a lot of what they have/will read could just be BS.

And now here we are with the mgmt of Agoracom basically playing it off like nothing happened. Business as usual for them, I guess. That email was more of a denial of personal responsibility than anything. Essentially, he's taking the blame for not being aware of what was going on. Gimme a break...