AOL 'Screw-up' Causes Search Data Spill
Found on eWEEK on Sunday, 06 August 2006
AOL on Aug. 7 blamed an internal "screw-up" for the embarrassing release of detailed keyword search data for roughly 658,000 anonymized users.
"This was a screw-up, and we're angry and upset about it," AOL spokesperson Andrew Weinstein said in a statement sent to eWEEK.
Weinstein said the release of the data was an innocent attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools.
Weinstein acknowledged that vanity searches, where users enter their own names into search engines, can sometimes lead to a privacy risk.
In some cases, Arrington said the data included personal names, addresses and Social Security numbers.
Either it was a planned release for the academic community, or a total screw-up. I wonder if the US laws allow such a release, or if AOL will soon have to deal with a bunch of lawsuits.