AOL reported to FTC
PrintYou got mail, but you don't have any privacy...
Posted in Music and Media, 16th August 2006 11:08 GMT
Free whitepaper – PowerEdge energy Smart brochure
AOL has been reported to the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive trade practises for releasing search logs for half a million users.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) made the complaint. It alleges that AOL's action in releasing the information was in breach of their own terms and conditions - that customer information would not be shared with third parties.
The information included 20m search terms from 658,000 AOL users. User names were not included but some individuals may be identifiable from their searches. The New York Times identified user number 4417749 as 62-year-old widow Thelma Arnold.
The EFF found searches from 106 users which seem to contain Social Security numbers and 4,000 searches which included street addresses.
AOL said at the time: "This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it."
More from the EFF here.
There are several sites where you can search the weird and wonderful world of what people search for. Try AOLStalker for a disturbing glimpse into a stranger's search box. ®
Enabling the Agile Data Center
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
Managing desktop software for fun and profit
Google Spanner — instamatic redundancy for 10 million servers?
Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala
Fedora 12 polishes Linux for netbooks
Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter