What do people search AOL for? Now we know
I will copy and paste an article I found because if I would rephrase it, it wouls sound wierd!
Just as Time Warner's AOL unit is reaching out to try to get more users by providing services for free, the Internet service provider has admitted to the kind of gaffe that is likely to scare them away: It inadvertently revealed to the world what 650,000 of its subscribers searched for as they browsed for online information.
The searches often contained data that helped identify the users themselves, including names, Social Security numbers and local landmarks that they had looked up.
The information was posted as a 440-megabyte downloadable file called "500Kusers.tgz " on a Web site, research.aol.com, about ten days ago. It was only when a number of Web logs began linking to the site over the weekend that AOL removed the file, which contained 19 million queries made from March 1 to May 31 . By then, copies of the file and its contents were circulating over the Internet.
In the file, AOL used serial numbers in the place of users' screen names. However, some queries include the names of users who were keen to see what has been written about them on the Web. When the names are bundled together with local restaurants and landmarks, it would be no major feat for friends, employers or fraudsters to work out users' identities.
At time of writing the original page with the download (all 439Mb of it) was unavailable, but it's already now widely available from various so-called 'mirror' sites
(http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/)
Just as Time Warner's AOL unit is reaching out to try to get more users by providing services for free, the Internet service provider has admitted to the kind of gaffe that is likely to scare them away: It inadvertently revealed to the world what 650,000 of its subscribers searched for as they browsed for online information.
The searches often contained data that helped identify the users themselves, including names, Social Security numbers and local landmarks that they had looked up.
The information was posted as a 440-megabyte downloadable file called "500Kusers.tgz " on a Web site, research.aol.com, about ten days ago. It was only when a number of Web logs began linking to the site over the weekend that AOL removed the file, which contained 19 million queries made from March 1 to May 31 . By then, copies of the file and its contents were circulating over the Internet.
In the file, AOL used serial numbers in the place of users' screen names. However, some queries include the names of users who were keen to see what has been written about them on the Web. When the names are bundled together with local restaurants and landmarks, it would be no major feat for friends, employers or fraudsters to work out users' identities.
At time of writing the original page with the download (all 439Mb of it) was unavailable, but it's already now widely available from various so-called 'mirror' sites
(http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/)
posted by Joel at
3:50 PM
Mini Golf
2 Comments:
Yeah Joel, AOL is nuts. Did you know that the government got yahoo to hand this kind of stuff over to it as well?
Google is the only search company that hasn't given up their records. Yay Google!
Here is an article about AOL searches providing evidence that a guy is planing to kill his wife.
And here is the link to a handy site that has put up the released AOL records online, where you can search and explore them at your leasure.
By
Anonymous, at 10:12 PM
Woo... that's weird. Scary. Freaky, and rather disturbing.
By
Anonymous, at 2:53 PM
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