AOL 'mistakenly' releases member Web-search data - MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- AOL Inc. said it mistakenly released data about the Web-search habits of more than 650,000 AOL members, in a move that infuriated online-privacy advocates, inflamed Internet pundits and enthralled the online-marketing world Monday.

 

The AOL users weren't personally identified in the data and instead were tracked by anonymous user-ID numbers. However, numbers would still allow everyone from law enforcement to identity thieves to analyze an individual's searches, which could involve names, addresses and other subjects that could provide hints to their identities. The Time Warner Inc. (TWX) unit acknowledged that "search queries themselves can sometimes include such information" and called the release "a screw-up."

 

AOL researchers posted the data, which detailed more than 20 million queries made by the users between March 1 and May 31, without authorization to a new AOL research Web site about 10 days ago. The document was for use by other search-technology researchers, but was noticed by bloggers in the search-marketing field late Sunday. Their discovery set off a flurry of blog postings and apparently led to hundreds of downloads of the data. AOL said it immediately pulled the data off its site on Sunday when it realized what had happened.

 

"We're angry and upset about it," said AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein in an emailed statement. "It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant."