by Playfuls Staff |
9th August 2006
AOL, the fourth Internet search giant after Google, Yahoo and MSN, has publicly admitted the embarrassment of releasing private information about 658,000 of its customers, compromising their privacy.[more]
The data is about the searches made by 658,000 AOL members between March and May 2006. Apparently, without authorization, a staff member from AOL posted on the Internet millions of search words used during the three month period, but with a positive purpose. He tried to offer to the research community the possibility to create a better tool for search engines, by studying the patterns present in the data offered about AOL clients.
Instead of offering the academic community involved in the creation of data mining algorithms and search tools the access to only portions of accredited information, they freely posted the entire amount of information on the site, allowing anyone to download it and…study it.
"This was a screw-up," AOL spokesperson Andrew Weinstein said, in explaining that 20 million search records were compromised. "We're absolutely not defending this. We apologize."
The actual data does not contain names, IDs being replaced by numbers, but one can easily find out a lot about a person just by studying what he/she searched for. Moreover, many users search the Internet using their names for different purposes: they try to find out if sites have information about them, if their blogs are indexed, etc…
The incident made AOL look very bad in the eyes of Internet users and generated a lot of negative reactions from them. Not to mention the fact that AOL is now in the situation of being powerless in trying to repair its mistake. Large chunks of the information about almost 20 million searches made by the 658,000 unfortunate users of AOL are still available on different sites or blogs.
“It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant,” Andrew Weinstein, AOL spokesman, said.
“Search query data can contain the sum total of our work, interests, associations, desires, dreams, fantasies, and even darkest fears,” said Lauren Weinstein, a privacy advocate.
Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the technology watchdog group Center for Democracy and Technology, lauded AOL for responding quickly.
He added that search engines should use AOL's disclosure to reevaluate why they even retain such data.
“Old searches don't mean a lot to them and present a big risk to individuals,” he said.
We're relaxed and unaware of the dangers we expose ourselves to when we search because it seems anonymous and private. "Most people assume the Internet is a more private medium than it is," says Greg Lastowka, a Rutgers law professor specializing in the Internet.
"With enough puzzle pieces, in this case searches, it's very possible to figure out who someone is," says Jim Harper of the Cato Institute.
“We supported Google at the time,” Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy-rights group in Washington, said, “but we also said that it was a mistake for Google to be saving so much information because it creates a risk.”
"We need some new privacy laws," Rotenberg added, "because Net users shouldn't be left with the choice of giving up their privacy or turning off their computer, which is where they are today if they use an Internet search engine."
