AOL Shoots Itself In The Foot:

[gatorboy]

http://chud.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93736

Just as Time Warner's AOL unit is reaching out to try to get more users by providing services for free, the Internet service provider has admitted to the kind of gaffe that is likely to scare them away: It inadvertently revealed to the world what 650,000 of its subscribers searched for as they browsed for online information.

The searches often contained data that helped identify the users themselves, including names, Social Security numbers and local landmarks that they had looked up.

''This was a screw-up, and we're angry and upset about it,'' AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein told The Associated Press. ''It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant.''

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According to SiliconBeat.com, the queries listed for one user included "shore hills park mays landing nj," "frank william sindoni md," "ceramic ashtrays" and "transfer money to china".