AOL Releases "Anonymized" Search Data--But There's No Such Thing

Joseph Laszlo | August 07, 2006, 10:27 AM

Many things terrify me in the world we live in...but this ranks high on the list. Over the weekend, someone at AOL apparently released a database containing anonymized--but not aggregated--search data from 650K users.

But TechCrunch ably points out, with examples, that this simply doesn't work--people unthinkingly search for all kinds of personal stuff, as well as impersonal stuff. So reportedly in a number of cases one can easily associate a bunch of search terms with name, and/or address (and maybe soc-sec number) of a real person. The Paradigm Shift is running all kinds of fascinating analyses of the data...not only is it a huge privacy violation, it's also incredibly valuable and AOL's just given it away for free.

I haven't actually grabbed a copy of the database...I don't want to see it. AOL's already taken it down, but a genie like this doesn't get stuffed back in the bottle; it's going to be mirrored and findable for ever. And everyone from search marketers to the government to just nosy folks are going to have a field day with this.

This just underscores the ridiculous amount of faith people have (probably mostly without realizing it) in their search provider. I've never used AOL search, thank heaven, but I'm thinking I'm never going to search for anything again, anywhere, without 3 layers of anonymity protection.

This isn't big news yet; it's still early on Monday morning. But I'm pretty sure that it's going to be...I'd guess this will scare people enough that there will be a lawsuit, and maybe even some legislation about online privacy protection that will keep the government and others out of even so-called "anonymized" search results going forward. Which might be a silver lining to this very dark cloud for 650,000 unlucky online users.