AOL had just a little leak

What you didn’t hear about AOL’s little mistake? Well they said it was to help academic researchers and while they may have had good intentions they surely did not think this one through very well. I don’t know what they expected by releasing 20 million search queries grouped by AOL user, well replaced with a randomly assigned userid.

• You can seach through the data they released.
• The NYTimes was even able to track down a woman based on the data with only an “anonymous” user number to group the searches together with.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation demands an FTC investigation and privacy reform.

Maybe someday AOL will keep itself out of the news. As it seems the only times they talked about is when they make some kind of mistake. Better yet maybe AOL will finally fall apart or just give up.

Tags: aol, image, news, privacy