EFF Files Complaint vs. AOL on Search Data Debacle
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a consumer advocate group, filed an official complaint against AOL today in the hopes of sparking an FTC investigation.
Last week, AOL researchers published three months worth of what they thought were anonymous search queries from 650,000 AOL users. In place of a user’s name, AOL assigned a number. However, it only took a few days for a New York Times reporter to identify user number 4417749 as 62 year-old Thelma Arnold of Georgia by her search queries. AOL quickly removed the search data and publicly apologized for its release.
AOL says it has launched an internal investigation to prevent that kind of mass release from happening again, but apparently that’s not enough for the EFF. In the complaint, the Foundation says that this release of consumer data was a breach of AOL’s stated privacy policy. It wants the FTC to make AOL inform customers if their search data had been released and force AOL to stop keeping track of most search data.
“Search terms can expose the most intimate details of a person’s life — private information about your family problems, your medical history, your financial situation, your political and religious beliefs, your sexual preferences, and much more,” said EFF attorney Marcia Hofmann in a statement. “At the very least, AOL should notify every customer whose privacy has been jeopardized by the company’s careless handling of this incredibly private information, and AOL should not store this kind of data in the future when it doesn’t have to.”
Tags: AOL, legal_issues and privacy
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