Private Messages Leaked on IVillage

Women who logged on Thursday to IVillage.com, a Web site network devoted to women, found not only the typical discussions on breast-feeding and children but also other people’s private messages, prompting fears that their own personal comments might be revealed.

Each time the site’s users logged on, they saw a different person’s messages.

“I tried about seven or eight times and each time got a different user’s in box, including someone I recognized from another message board at ParentsPlace,” one of IVillage’s Web sites, said Laurie Clark of Fenton, Mich.

Clark said she could access other people’s messages, though she was careful to read only junk mail.

IVillage Inc. spokesman Carl Fischer said the company was aware of the glitch and was trying to fix it.

IVillage took its e-mail system offline at 7 a.m. Fischer declined to say how many people have IVillage e-mail addresses.

The company did not rule out a hacker attack as the cause.

“We’re concentrating on finding out what went wrong,” Fischer said. “We’re not going to put it back up until we find out for sure what happened.”

Comscore Media Metrix, a Web ratings firm, ranks IVillage, with about 9.5 million users, among the top 30 Web destinations. New York-based IVillage recently bought rival Women.com and owns the satellite television network Newborn Channel, shown in more than 1,000 hospitals. IVillage also runs the Web sites of several women’s magazines, including Cosmopolitan and Redbook.

Some IVillage users said they feared for their financial well-being as well as their personal privacy.

“I have some e-mails in there from my electric and phone company that may contain my account numbers,” Clark said.

Several IVillage message boards referred to the glitch and contained messages from irate members.

“It has happened now about 10 times! I am going to delete anything personal in there ASAP! I don’t know why I bother using free stuff!!!!” said one, who identified herself only as “Tina.”

Several free Web e-mail systems have had their share of problems. This month, the South China Morning Post reported that people who accessed Yahoo Inc.’s e-mail service through a mobile phone could see other users’ e-mail accounts at random.

Microsoft Corp.’s Hotmail e-mail service has had several security problems in the last couple of years, allowing anyone to read a user’s e-mail address. Each of the holes took as long as a day to fix.

IVillage shares closed unchanged at 84 cents on Nasdaq.