AOL apologizes
AOL apologized for releasing search log data on subscribers that had been intended for use with the company's newly launched research site.
"This was a screw-up, and we're angry and upset about it. 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," AOL, a unit of Time Warner, said in a statement. "Although there was no personally identifiable data linked to these accounts, we're absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize. We've launched an internal investigation into what happened, and we are taking steps to ensure that this type of thing never happens again."
"We think it's a major privacy concern, and we're glad to see AOL is taking it seriously," said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Companies that deal in search results have to understand that they carry very sensitive information, even if it doesn't have what we would traditionally consider to be personally identifiable information involved."
Schwartz and other privacy advocates noted that with bits of information, a "mosaic" could be created that could eventually lead a person to identify the individual in question.
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