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Some filmmakers have produced an amazing series of episodes based on one person’s searches discovered in the AOL search data release debacle. Here’s the trailer:

And the description from the website where you can view them all:
August 4, 2006, the personal search queries of 650,000 AOL (America Online) users accidentally ended up on the Internet, for all to see. These search queries were entered in AOL’s search engine over a three-month period. After three days AOL realized their blunder and removed the data from their site, but the sensitive private data …

(Updated below with responses to comments by Jason Kaufman, one of the lead researchers on this project)
(Another update: I’m pretty sure the “anonymous, Northeastern university” from where this dataset was derived is Harvard College. Details here)
A group of researchers have released a dataset of Facebook profile information from a group of college students for research purposes, which I know a lot of people will find quite valuable. (Thanks to Fred Stutzman for bringing it to my attention.)
Here is the description from the Berkman Center’s announcement:
The dataset comprises machine-readable files of …

Prompted by Google’s resistance to cluttering its homepage with a link to its privacy policy, I decided to take a quick tour of the major search engines to compare the relative visibility of their privacy policies.
AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have visible privacy policies on both their homepages and search results page (which is especially important if you use automatic search toolbars on browsers without visiting the homepage).
Neither Ask nor Google provide direct links to their privacy policy on their homepage or results pages.
[**UPDATE**  On June 18, 2008, Ask.com added a …

A recent column by Christopher Soghoian on CNet predicts a decline in companies sharing “anonymized” user data with the academic research community. Along with last year’s AOL data release debacle, Soghoian points to a more recent case where researchers were able to de-anonymize a data set released by Netflix, comprising of 100 million movie ratings made by 500,000 subscribers to their online DVD rental service.
As both a privacy advocate and someone who respects the research information scientists (such as Jim Jansen or Amanda Spink) are able to perform with these …

Leading into this week’s FTC town hall meeting addressing the growing concerns about Internet and search companies developing the means to track and profile users, AOL has announced plans to enable users to sign up for “do-not-track” lists similar to the popular “do-not-call” lists removing phone numbers from telemarketer databases. Users will be able to opt-out of tracking by the largest advertising networks. The site’s technology will also apparently ensure that people’s preferences are not erased later.
(I’m guessing this will be done via a cookie, so each user’s particular browser …

Adam Fields points to this disturbing revelation that ISPs are apparently selling their customer’s clickstream data. The guilty ISPs apparently took the same “anonymization” seminar as AOL, merely replacing user names with User 1, User 2, etc.
And what kind of price are they charging for such a violation of user’s privacy? About 40 cents a month per user. Unbelievable.
UPDATE: The folks at 27B Stroke 6 have sent letters to the ten top ISPs asking whether they do collect and sell customer clickstream data. So far, Cox and AOL have …

The Wall Street Journal has published a debate (well, an e-mail exchange) between Kevin Bankston, a privacy lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Markham Erickson, a lobbyist for Internet firms including Google and Yahoo, on the topic of the privacy of web search histories. Here’s a choice excerpt where Bankston takes Erickson to task about innovation vs. monetization as the true motivation behind retaining user search history records:
Erickson: …This transactional information, separated from the personal information of the user, is used by companies to improve their abilities to provide …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation provides these tips to help keep your search history anonymous:
How can you help prevent damaging privacy invasions like AOL’s data leak? Along with spreading the word about this debacle, you can take steps to protect yourself online. Beneath the fold, we’ve listed some tips and tools that will help keep your search history private.

Don’t put personally-identifying information in your searches, at least not in a way that can be associated with your other searches. You should take the precautions below to avoid giving away your …

From the EFF:
AOL’s data leak is a disaster, but there may be some silver lining. By putting the spotlight on the dangers of Internet companies storing massive amounts of private information, the data leak could spur better business practices and Congressional action to protect privacy.
While AOL rightly apologized and began investigation into its practices, Google CEO Eric Schmidt unfortunately appeared to shrug off the issue, essentially saying “trust us.” That’s not an adequate response, as the LA Times and USA Today made clear in editorials this week:

LA Times: “The companies …

Why was  the AOL data dump wrong? “Because it hurts people. It makes them feel defensive about their own thoughts and ideas,” says Mary Hodder.
She’s right.

Declan McCullagh at CNet has posted many more, often disturbing, profiles of users gleaned from the AOL search data leak. Examples include:
Based on the number of local searches, AOL user 1515830 appears to be a resident of [personal information removed]. On March 1, user 1515830 was trying to find the amount of calories in chai tea and bananas. But on March 9, the searches took a darker turn:
chai tea calories
calories in bananas
aftermath of incest
how to tell your family you’re a victim of incest
pottery barn
curtains
surgical help for depression
oakland raiders comforter …

It is not that hard to identity actual users from the “anonymous” search data released by AOL. The New York Times quickly found user No. 4417749:
No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from “numb fingers” to “60 single men” to “dog that urinates on everything.”
And search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No. 4417749 became easier to discern. There are queries for “landscapers in Lilburn, Ga,” several people with the last name Arnold and “homes sold in shadow lake subdivision …

Might AOL’s release of the logs of nearly 20 million web searches documenting three months of activity by 650,000 AOL users serve to raise awareness of the privacy concerns with web search surveillance (that I’ve been writing about forever)? Seth Finkelstein hopes so, but also warns that the potential abuse of the released data by hackers and big business might be even worse than what we were concerned about when the DOJ asked for it:
AOL has just given us the world’s biggest real-world experiment as to whether privacy invasion can …

AOL has issued an apology for releasing the logs of nearly 20 million web searches documenting three months of activity by 650,000 AOL users:
“This was a screw-up, and we’re angry and upset about it. 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,” AOL, a unit of Time Warner, said in a statement. “Although there was no personally identifiable data linked to …

Have you ever searched for your social security number to see if it happened to be posted online somewhere? Have you searched for it along with your name? Many do, and it has apparently been confirmed that the massive database of search history AOL released does include searches with users’ social security numbers.
From the Interesting People mailing list:
A search for an SSN shaped regex on the full AOL search data returns a 191 results including repeat searches. Many of these have full names, and at …