funsec mailing list archives
Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder
From: "Robert D. Holtz" <robert.d.holtz () gmail com>
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 17:12:36 -0500
The data are also still out there on multiple mirror sites. This data provides a very interesting view into folk's lives. You could use this information to work backwards in order to determine show some of these people might be. It's a stunning blunder. Here's one of the sites: http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/ _____ From: Richard M. Smith [mailto:rms () bsf-llc com] Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 9:24 AM To: privacy () whitestar linuxbox org Subject: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=4 <http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=4&no =309830&rel_no=1> &no=309830&rel_no=1 In an inexplicably foolish and potentially devastating move, America Online (AOL) released massive amounts of private data to the whole world. Sometime on Sunday it was discovered that AOL made 20 million search queries made by 650,000 of its users, along with additional information related to these queries, available to the public for download on one of its pages, which has since been taken down. Though news sources have been virtually mute on the event so far, blogs have been quickly picking up on the news and reacting strongly. The word "boycott" has been associated with AOL in many of these posts. The private data contains searches from these 650,000 AOL users over the course of three months (March through May) in 2006. It also includes indications of whether or not a user actually clicked on a search result, what the result was, and what rank the result held on the search results page. ...
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Current thread:
- [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Richard M. Smith (Aug 07)
- Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Robert D. Holtz (Aug 07)
- Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Dude VanWinkle (Aug 07)
- Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Robert D. Holtz (Aug 08)
- Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Dude VanWinkle (Aug 07)
- Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Dr. Neal Krawetz (Aug 08)
- Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Dude VanWinkle (Aug 08)
- Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Randy Abrams (Aug 08)
- Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Robert D. Holtz (Aug 08)
- Re: [privacy] AOL's Big Privacy Blunder Robert D. Holtz (Aug 07)