AOL released a massive amount of private data without user consent or knowing what it was doing yesterday. This includes a staggering 20 million queries by 650,000 AOL users!



The 439 MB compressed download (expanded to over 2 GB) includes:

a) all searches from those users for a three month period this year,

b) whether they clicked on a result,

c) what that result was and

d) where it appeared on the result page.





Although AOL might have changed usernames a random ID number, chances are that by analyzing all searches by a particular user you can find out who the user is, and what are they doing (maybe even thinking, planning etc) without much difficulty. The data includes everything that someone typed into a search box including personal names, addresses, social security numbers etc.



There had been really some scary revelations as well. For example, this post in Paradigm Shift reveals the history for user 17556639’s most recent search is. What do you think the bloke is up to? Criminal bent of mind, researcher, joy surfer? Your guess is as good as mine.



Just check below:



17556639 how to kill your wife

17556639 how to kill your wife

17556639 wife killer

17556639 how to kill a wife

17556639 poop

17556639 dead people

17556639 pictures of dead people

17556639 killed people

17556639 dead pictures

17556639 dead pictures

17556639 dead pictures

17556639 murder photo

17556639 steak and cheese

17556639 photo of death

17556639 photo of death

17556639 death

17556639 dead people photos

17556639 photo of dead people

17556639 www.murderdpeople.com

17556639 decapatated photos

17556639 decapatated photos

17556639 car crashes3

17556639 car crashes3

17556639 car crash photo





Though, AOL has removed the page and the download, the damage has already been done. The data was lapped up by 100s of people (total downloads counted is 809 times) and now there are mirror sites available where the data can still be downloaded from. By now, my own estimates say that already with the number of mirror sites cropping up and some asking to mirror them, there has already been 100s of 1000s of downloads already. It is spreading faster than any wildfire you can imagine.



Read more about the unfolding scandal here in Techcrunch.



What I would like to say is that this callous blunder on AOL’s part is a big boost to the Department of Justice seeking similar data from search service providers, and against whom Google fought in the courts and won. This has undone all the good work done by the sentinels of privacy and did serious damage to whatever winning arguments they presented in the courts.



The government has a big weapon now to take up this matter again. One can only hope that this doesn’t happen. Due to AOL’s stupidity, the privacy of the millions of search engine users - be it Google, MSN, Yahoo! search engine users is being compromised beyond any word.



Why only the government? This might make some citizens jittery too, for example, like here in this case if a woman’s husband threatens to kill her often and uses the net every night she would definitely want the government to do anything to stop her from getting killed; and all because of someone searched for ‘How to kill wife’! Irnony of ironies, after this there would be many commoners who would support any move by the government that can preempt a possible criminal act.



AOL can only be punished by a mass boycott of its services. No mater whatever happens, search privacy will never remain the same again.



By the way, I have downloaded the stuff myself and have some fun analyzing it later tonight :-) Thank you AOL.