AOL has issued an apology after posting details of over 20 million web searches, performed by more than 650,000 of its users, on a research website. Releasing the information violates the company鈥檚 own rules on privacy, even though only user-ID numbers were revealed alongside the search data.
The company removed the information, collected between March and May, after bloggers became aware of it over the weekend. But the information had already been copied and remains available for downloaded from many other websites. Bloggers were quick to examine the data, some even noting that one user had conducted several of searches using the phrase 鈥渉ow to kill your wife鈥�.
AOL says it has launched an internal investigation to prevent further blunders occurring in the future, and to determine if disciplinary action is needed.
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鈥淭his was a screw-up and we鈥檙e angry and upset about it,鈥� the company said in a statement. 鈥淎lthough there was no personally-identifiable data linked to these accounts, we鈥檙e absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologise.鈥�
Religious beliefs
The search data was published in July 2006 on a new AOL website designed to help search-technology researchers. While one expert estimates that, out of the 20 million searches, only a few hundred contained sensitive information such as names, addresses or Social Security numbers, others note that revealing any of the data constitutes a violation of privacy.
鈥淪earch data can reveal very personal information, including political and religious beliefs, medical conditions and financial information,鈥� Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online-privacy advocacy group, told The Wall Street Journal. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a serious disregard for user privacy, particularly considering the uproar over the [US Justice Department鈥檚] demand for this kind of information from Google earlier this year.鈥�
In 2005 AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft all complied with a US government request for search data to support a law designed to shield minors from sexually explicit material. Google refused to hand over the information at the time, although a court ruled in March 2006 that it must hand over some of the data.
