AOL Releases Search Queries of 650k Users w/o Permission

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster

Originally posted by: mugs
They were giving the data away for research purposes.

research my ass...

http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/U500k_README.txt

They gave it away for free, what do you think they did it for? Just to piss people off?

 

[SagaLore]

I was about to defend them, citing Overture's Inventory stats as a reasonable example, but then I fully read the article... OUCH, they divulged ALL of the search information, doing nothing more than changing the usernames to numeric IDs.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Originally posted by: JS80
man that is stupid. why in God's name would a VP at AOL approve this?

I am willing to bet other search engines are selling search strings as well.

AOL just got caught.

They didn't sell them. They publicly posted them.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: effowe
Here's a bunch of things that people searched for. Some funny, some sad.

User 4149050 - "I want to marry an elgal allian"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH