[privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com>]

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=4
<http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=4&no
=309830&rel_no=1> &no=309830&rel_no=1
 
In an inexplicably foolish and potentially devastating move, America Online
(AOL) released massive amounts of private data to the whole world. Sometime
on Sunday it was discovered that AOL made 20 million search queries made by
650,000 of its users, along with additional information related to these
queries, available to the public for download on one of its pages, which has
since been taken down.

Though news sources have been virtually mute on the event so far, blogs have
been quickly picking up on the news and reacting strongly. The word
"boycott" has been associated with AOL in many of these posts.

The private data contains searches from these 650,000 AOL users over the
course of three months (March through May) in 2006. It also includes
indications of whether or not a user actually clicked on a search result,
what the result was, and what rank the result held on the search results
page.

...
 

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