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Protecting your privacy on line
2006-08-07 09:19 pmAOL publishes database of users' intentions | The Register
In a massive fit of idiocy, AOL published a the search query history of 650,000 users "for research purposes". They have since been withdrawn, but are of course still floating around the web. The users' names were anonymized, but how much digging does it take to find a name, a phone number, an address, and possibly even a social security number in a search history. Surely I can't be the only one to have done an ego search.
So far I have restrained my curiosity about whether any sites out there have published my social security number. Suddenly I'm very glad about that.
In a massive fit of idiocy, AOL published a the search query history of 650,000 users "for research purposes". They have since been withdrawn, but are of course still floating around the web. The users' names were anonymized, but how much digging does it take to find a name, a phone number, an address, and possibly even a social security number in a search history. Surely I can't be the only one to have done an ego search.
So far I have restrained my curiosity about whether any sites out there have published my social security number. Suddenly I'm very glad about that.
