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AOL Apologizes for Releasing Search Data from 658,000 Users

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current event by tomtolman on 08 August 2006, tagged as internetnetworking

Almost 2 weeks ago, AOL quietly released roughly 20 million search records from 658,000 users on their new AOL Research site. The data includes a number assigned to the anonymous user, the search term, the date and time of the search, and the website visited as a result of the search. Although AOL did not identify the users, some argue it is possible to combine search information to profile and possibly identify users.

This comes just months after the government requested all the search results conducted over a 1 week period from all the major search engines including AOL, Yahoo, and Google. Google was the only search engine that did not give in to the request. They took their case to court and eventually won.

AOL's public release of the data went largely unnoticed for over a week until the story broke on Digg on Sunday. AOL pulled the data from their site and then apologized. However, they could not stop the data from being disseminated. Several torrents were set up and a few people have attempted to put web interfaces on the data. Some have reported finding very private and shocking results including possible illegal drug use, murder, suicide, medical information, names, addresses and social security numbers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has suggested that AOL has broken federal law and may be held financially liable.

Others suggest the hype is overblown--that the results really don't reveal private data and can help researchers develop better search engines. Researchers have already used the data to produce at least one study to improve the efficiency of search engines. Still others suggest that the bloggers who publicized this story are "just as bad as [AOL]." Do search engines keep too much information or are the privacy concerns overblown?

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AOL is toast by jmarkdavison :: NR6

AOL just announced it is laying off more than 25% of its workforce.

AOL just decided to allow free access to its content, several years after Google, Yahoo, and MSN pioneered the concept.

AOL has been a lodestone around Time Warner's neck ever since the 2000 merger.

I'm not saying AOL is going to disappear--some Americans still travel by train decades after the airplane was invented--but it has quickly became obselete. Throw AOL on the scrap heap with Ford and GM.

Posted 08 August 2006, Hide, Reply
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AOL Users Find OmniNerd by tomtolman :: NR6

At least a few of the 20 million searchers ended up on OmniNerd. Here are a couple of the results I found:

    • User #2363237 homeschoolers score high in their stanford achievement tests 2006-03-23 02:03:29 http://www.omninerd.com#
Posted 08 August 2006, Hide, Reply
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Internet EULA by VnutZ :: NR8

I suppose the dominant question is really whether people HAVE a right to privacy on the Internet. Do they?

Every search engine is a company's application. It is not your right to use Google or Yahoo. It is your consent to use the software designed by said company in the manner in which it was designed. People should not be surprised to find out that searches are saved and recorded. It would help the company's R&D to develop a better product, to draw more users who will earn them more revenue. It's ultimately about dollars. It's not about providing you a free lunch.

Should you have an expectation that your e-mail is not archived? Unless your service agreement indicates privacy, I would never expect it. There are so many web interfaces involved, that messages are cached in browsers and proxies. Google never seems to delete e-mail unless you explicitly do it through the webpage. Also remember all the web traffic machines in the middle - they monitor the content flying across the ether to determine what sorts of traffic is on the 'net.

What can you really do about it? Encryption. Or just send giant e-mails back and forth to eat up that disk quota. Anonymizing services. Or engage in identify theft and perform all your actions as somebody else.

Posted 09 August 2006, Hide, Reply