Amazon.com Pierces Reviewer Anonymity

theodp writes "Amazon reviewers who anonymously posted book reviews or signed their critiques only as 'a reader from (fill in the city)' lost their anonymity this week when their identities were revealed on Amazon's site. Among those named were prominent authors who posted glowing five-star reviews of their own work. The weeklong glitch, which Amazon fixed after outed reviewers complained, provided a rare glimpse at how writers and readers are wielding the online reviews as a tool to promote or pan books when they think no one is watching. An Amazon spokeswoman told the NY Times the problem was 'an unfortunate error.'"

Comments

Sloppy design

[FauxPasIII]

If Amazon had any intention of keeping this information a secret, then why did their database even preserve information on who posted what? I would think if you post something anonymously, the posted_by attribute for that entry in the database would be set to anonymous, and that would be that. I hope that's how it works here at slashdot...