Search slip reveals the dark side of AOL users

A privacy fiasco has hit American Online (AOL).   AOL published the results of a massive study of user searching (mirrors).  TechCrunch points out that although individual users were anonymized under random numbers, it would be easy to assign searches to numbers, and glean information.  What's searched for can be very informative about personal lives, including legal names, social security numbers, credit card and bank info, and much more.

And that information can be disturbing.  For example, some searches sound like impending suicide or murder.

(thanks to Steven Kaye)

Comments

[Steven Kaye]

And not only is the data mirrored all over the place, someone's come up with a Web interface for it:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/08/aol-data-first-web-interfaces-up/