AOL Releases Private Data
AOL has released, and subsequently pulled, a huge amount of personal data. They posted 20 million search queries from 650,000 users and whilst the usernames have been replaced with numbers, it could be possible to identify people. As Techcrunch points out, some people like to boost their ego by searching for their name but could then search for something that could get them into a lot of trouble. Take this users' search queries. Does he really want to kill his wife?
As mentioned, the data has been pulled by AOL but it has been mirrored elesewhere.
Update: Google Blogoscoped has more info.
Update 2: If you decide to download the data, post any funny search queries that you find. I had a quick look and found one funny one -
# my secret gay nude photos - they're not secret anymore!
Update 3: Excel guru, John Walkenbach, from The J-Walk Blog, has condensed the AOL data into a much smaller Excel file.
Update 4: AOL: “This was a screw up”
Looks like he was a sicko to me, so why the fuss if the info could have stopped him in his tracks?
Posted by: jonathan | Monday, August 07, 2006 at 09:41 PM
This reminds me of the comment posted from Africa on this blog requesting people to contact him so he could share "dead peopel imges" with other interested dead people fanatics.
Posted by: proffessortwo | Tuesday, August 08, 2006 at 02:36 AM
A site where you can search the data is here:
http://www.datablunder.com/logitems/query/
Posted by: ty | Saturday, August 12, 2006 at 05:07 PM