Comments on: AOL Search Scandal – Has It Really Gone Away? https://www.dpscomputing.com/blog/2012/04/09/aol-search-scandal-has-it-really-gone-away/ Your Ultimate Computing Website! Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:26:07 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.8 By: DPS David https://www.dpscomputing.com/blog/2012/04/09/aol-search-scandal-has-it-really-gone-away/comment-page-1/#comment-274 Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:26:07 +0000 http://dpscomputing.com/wordpress/?p=952#comment-274 Well, apparently it was with good not malicious intentions. It was proposed (and used in a paper) by researchers in AOL looking at the way people search. They released the search data to the public to aid further research, although they took it down quite quickly after publication.

But with the Internet being the Internet…. well even after 3 days, something as juicy as this was mirrored all over the world – and still is to this day.

Yes, people searching for example, their address would have a definite right to be concerned.

And yes I think AOL did leave themselves open to a lawsuit due to this (which I agree with).

However, after AOL published the information, it went into the public domain. I disagree with some of the “subjects” in this data threatening sites which have commented on it or analysed it.

It’s in the public domain, no court has ruled that it shouldn’t be in the public domain therefore if anyone who has been anonymised and made part of this research has an issue, they should most definitely file action against the people who released the information – in this case AOL :).

]]> By: Ben Stones https://www.dpscomputing.com/blog/2012/04/09/aol-search-scandal-has-it-really-gone-away/comment-page-1/#comment-270 Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:12:49 +0000 http://dpscomputing.com/wordpress/?p=952#comment-270 Not sure why they published all the search data for that period of time. What if someone searched for their address? I actually agree with the lawsuit Aol faced in 2006.

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