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Saturday Morning News

Dot.comguy Discusses His Quest to Live off the Net

Aired February 12, 2000 - 9:55 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it's been nearly a month and a half since the e-commerce pioneer known only as Dot.comguy started his year-long quest to live entirely off the Internet. He is allowed to have visitors, but he can't go beyond his home and back yard.

Dot.comguy joining us via the Internet this morning with an update on how the experiment is going.

How are you, Dot.comguy?

DOT.COMGUY: Doing great, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let -- you've been obviously watching, like all of us, the wave of hacker attacks. First of all, have you had any denial-of-service hacking sieges on your site?

Dot.comGUY: No, I haven't, and also we've actually coined a new phrase here on Dot.comGUY with the help for our viewers. We don't call them hacking because it's not the integrity of the servers that's actually being violated. We call it SMAKing (ph), or SMAKERs (ph), where it's simultaneous multiple attacks killing e-commerce resources.

O'BRIEN: SMACKERs, OK.

DOT.COMGUY: Now, because they're not really hacking into the site, they're just sending data to the site.

O'BRIEN: Well, you hear -- heard it here second, at least, (inaudible). That's -- I mean, what are your thoughts? Does this -- do you think this is a harbinger of bad things to come for the Internet, or is this just the kind of thing, this wakeup call is a good thing right now? A lot of these sites will tighten up their security a bit?

DOT.COMGUY: Well, yes, it's a big wakeup call to the smaller sites, not the ones who were actually attacked, but the ones who had the loopholes which allowed these attacks to occur. And fortunately the FBI and the authorities are dealing with it quickly and severely -- swiftly. But also, it's, you know, just a reminder that, you know, tech -- the technology is new, just like with -- when computers first came into regular consumer products and services, you'd call up your bank, and they'd say, Well, wish I could help you, but our computers are down. Same type of thing. This isn't really compromising any data. No one should be worried. It's just that -- you know, it's like the power going out or something like that. But we should deal with these SMAK attacks very severely.

O'BRIEN: All right. I've got to ask you before we get away, how are things going for you? What do you miss the most, if anything?

DOT.COMGUY: Oh, it's going great. I miss being able to read all my e-mails every day. I kind of have to wait till the weekend, I have so much -- so many of them coming in. But it's a great experience, and I'm really learning a lot about the Internet.

O'BRIEN: Dot.comguy, we'll be checking in with him monthly as he continues his indoor -- well, with a little bit of time outdoors, odyssey. Thanks very much for being with us.

DOT.COMGUY: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right.

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