The scary world of AOL users.

[gatorboy]

http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/08/07/aol-search-data-shows-users-planning-to-commit-murder/

Users in the comments are pissed off at the idea that people can be arrested for planning a crime like murder, calling it minority report like.   I ask you why is it that americans have no problems arresting people that are planning or researching how to conduct terrorist attacks?  Yet if a person plans on killing his wife that is ok, until he actually does it?   How many people do you have to plan on killing before its ok for a company like AOL to hand your records over to the government? I am not taking sides,  I’m just pointing out the obvious double standard.  This story will open a can of worms, and will decide just how private your data online really is.

http://research.aol.com released a list of 20 million + searches by 500,000 AOL users.  Contained in this list are social security numbers, credit cards and other personal information.   There are some truly scary things in this database.

<snip>

Check out the search history for  user 17556639,  most recent search is at the bottom of the list..  Does this look like the search history of a user wanting to do something bad? 

17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 wife killer
17556639 how to kill a wife
17556639 poop
17556639 dead people
17556639 pictures of dead people
17556639 killed people
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 murder photo
17556639 steak and cheese
17556639 photo of death
17556639 photo of death
17556639 death
17556639 dead people photos
17556639 photo of dead people
17556639 www.murderdpeople.com
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crash photo

[elehhhhna]

1. one could research a novel on the internets, ya know.

[Atman]

4. And sandwiches. And poop.

Just sayin.

[Truthiness Inspector]

2. Adding to the mess

is the fact that AOL "apologized" in a released statement, but they have not notified their customers that their privacy may have been breached. Chances are, most people on AOL will never even see it. They should have sent out an email to all of their customers alerting them to this, but instead it looks like they want to keep them in the dark.

[Atman]

3. Well, at least he took a break for lunch.

About half way down..."steak and cheese." Maybe he was he planning on killing his wife with cholesterol?

[Atman]

5. I thought this was a post about people trying to cancel their accounts.

;)

[gatorboy]

8. HEH! Sorry!

Though I have been in that scary world previously. :P

[Generic Other]

6. I quit my aol service yesterday

They are now letting us keep our email free. The customer rep was apologetic as I ranted about this invasion of privacy.

The rep said those whose info was given out were contacted by the company. Think he was telling the truth?

The kind of personal info to be gleaned from 650k customers' searches is appalling. If you searched for your name, your friends, porn, your workplace, illegal stuff, etc...some people's credit card numbers, social security numbers...and dozens of mirrored sites where you can download the info!

I hope there is a class action lawsuit.

[gatorboy]

7. Telling the truth? Probably not.

They released 650,000 user's information. That's alot of people to contact.

Not to mention, how are you going to break it to Mr. Smith that everyone now knows how much he enjoys a good butt plug?