Clear Ambiguity

AOL chief technology officer resigns: sources | Entertainment | Industry | Reuters.com

AOL’s CTO has resigned (think pushed) taking a couple of underlings with her. This is the first published damage caused by the AOL search data being released, but it wont be the last.

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A couple of posta ago, I pointed to an online search site where anyone can look at random AOL user’s searches. This data will be quite useful to researches, private investiators, the police and just about anyone who could gain from intimate knowledge on peoples private lives. I can see huge issues with the easy availability of this data, including what I consider is probably the scariest and that is I think people are going to die because of it. Seriously.

Just a minute ago I played witht the random search tool wondering just how hard it would be to identify a user. Turns out it is way too easy. I don’t wont to put any details here (I think this guy is going to have enough problems as it is) but the particular record I looked at was an American minor (under 18), who asks the AOL search engine some very personal questions. He also searches for his name and his school. There is no doubt that a complete ID can quickly be made and due to the private nature of his searches I think that the next time he looks online for his name the poor young bloke will have a devastating realisation that his private life is now out there for all (including his friends, enemies, school mates, etc) to see.

There are around 600,000 possible stories like this in the AOL data and I think that if this young man or 1000’s like him are in anyway depressed, then this may have them thinking of suicide. AOL have apologised for releasing this data, but I think that they should in some way be held accountable for the likely devastation they are going to cause and I seriously believe young lives are at risk.

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Recently AOL decided it would be a good idea to release search data from their customers for research purposes. Natualrally this is a stupid idea, as it is quite easy to decifer enough details from many of these “anonymous” records to identify people. This has already been done, but if you want to have a look through the data and even search it then http://www.dontdelete.com makes that easy for you. There is even a random search button which as they say can give you hours of entertainment.

Be careful what you look at though. The list of URL’s from the 4th person I looked/ laughed at was decidedly dodgy.

One interesting little snippet is that the number one search term on AOL search is “google”- now that’s funny.
have fun

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