more on AOL Releases Search Logs from 500,000 Users

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: steven cherry <steven () panix com>
Date: August 8, 2006 9:31:34 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on AOL Releases Search Logs from 500,000 Users

> A search for an SSN shaped regex on the full AOL search data  
> returns a 191 results including repeat searches.  Many of these  
> have full names, and at least a dozen include either an addresses,  
> drivers license number, date of birth or some combination of the  
> three in the same query.  There's no telling how much more  
> information an aggregation of other queries by those same user ID  
> would yield.

Dave,

Latanya Sweeney, a computer privacy researcher at CMU, has been  
looking at this sort of thing for several years now. For example,  
many resumes posted to Monster and other job boards have SSNs in a  
standard format, along with dates of birth and other revealing  
information. They can be found in PDFs as well as HTML pages quite  
easily. The problem is even worse - at least those resumes are self- 
posted. There are government databases and court records on line with  
some of the same information as well. See

 <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar05/2947>

  Why Pay to be an Identity Thief? Experimental
  Software Makes It Free

  Thieves purchased sensitive personal data from
  ChoicePoint, but a Carnegie Mellon University
  researcher can get the same information free
  on the Web



--
   Steven Cherry, +1 212-419-7566
   Senior Associate Editor
   IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave,  New York, NY 10016
   <s.cherry () ieee org>  <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org>


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