Comments on: More From The AOL Screw Up http://www.vanseodesign.com/search-engines/more-from-the-aol-screw-up/ Helping you build search engine friendly websites Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:29:40 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: Google Takes Steps To Protect Privacy - TheVanBlog http://www.vanseodesign.com/search-engines/more-from-the-aol-screw-up/comment-page-1/#comment-128 Google Takes Steps To Protect Privacy - TheVanBlog Sat, 17 Mar 2007 01:51:45 +0000 http://www.vanseodesign.com/blog/uncategorized/more-from-the-aol-screw-up/#comment-128 [...] You may remember this past summer AOL released search data that it believed was anonymous. In a matter of days some of that anonymous data was tied to one very real person. In the AOL case, while no person was associated with any specific query, the queries themselves were connected so that anyone could tell which queries were done by the same person. By making a few educated guesses New York Times reporters were able to figure out the identity of one of the searchers. [...] [...] You may remember this past summer AOL released search data that it believed was anonymous. In a matter of days some of that anonymous data was tied to one very real person. In the AOL case, while no person was associated with any specific query, the queries themselves were connected so that anyone could tell which queries were done by the same person. By making a few educated guesses New York Times reporters were able to figure out the identity of one of the searchers. [...]

]]> By: Steven Bradley http://www.vanseodesign.com/search-engines/more-from-the-aol-screw-up/comment-page-1/#comment-127 Steven Bradley Thu, 10 Aug 2006 18:56:14 +0000 http://www.vanseodesign.com/blog/uncategorized/more-from-the-aol-screw-up/#comment-127 I agree. It's something that we all need to start discussing more. This was a screw up and there's not reason to believe it won't happen again at AOL or any of the other search engines. And what about all the smaller engines who may not have the same security in place as the major eninges. I'm sure many of those smaller search engines would have difficulty keeping someone determined from getting in to their database. There's certainly a lot of use in the data for marketing and simply for understanding search better, but does that value outweigh what could be lost by the wrong search data falling into the wrong hands? I agree. It’s something that we all need to start discussing more. This was a screw up and there’s not reason to believe it won’t happen again at AOL or any of the other search engines. And what about all the smaller engines who may not have the same security in place as the major eninges.

I’m sure many of those smaller search engines would have difficulty keeping someone determined from getting in to their database.

There’s certainly a lot of use in the data for marketing and simply for understanding search better, but does that value outweigh what could be lost by the wrong search data falling into the wrong hands?

]]> By: Matt Johnson http://www.vanseodesign.com/search-engines/more-from-the-aol-screw-up/comment-page-1/#comment-126 Matt Johnson Thu, 10 Aug 2006 17:16:41 +0000 http://www.vanseodesign.com/blog/uncategorized/more-from-the-aol-screw-up/#comment-126 I find it unbelievable that a company as big as AOL could mess up as big as this. After the fuss Google made about keeping search data private AOL give it away without even being asked to. What were they thinking? How long before a criminal identifies an individual from this search data and uses the data to commit identity theft? Apparently there were a number of credit card numbers and social security numbers in the search data. I find it unbelievable that a company as big as AOL could mess up as big as this.
After the fuss Google made about keeping search data private AOL give it away without even being asked to.

What were they thinking?

How long before a criminal identifies an individual from this search data and uses the data to commit identity theft? Apparently there were a number of credit card numbers and social security numbers in the search data.

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