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The Roar of the Masses Could be Farts
join:2000-11-09
Chevy Chase, MD | Dumb and Dumber(er)..... This is incredible. How many more times do you suppose AOL can shoot themselves in the foot? It must be a ragged, bloody stump at this point. | |
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Michieru2
zzz zzz zzz
Premium
join:2005-01-28
Miami, FL | Re: Dumb and Dumber(er)..... Why can't they shoot themselves in the heart already? | |
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envoid
join:2002-12-21
Duluth, GA
1 edit | They're apparently in damage control mode now as they removed the data.
Update: Sometime around 7 pm PST on Sunday, the AOL site referred to below was taken down. The direct link to the data is still live. A cached copy of the page is here. Further Update: Sometime after 7 pm the download link went down as well, but there is at least one mirror site. AOL is in damage control mode - the fact that they took the data down shows that someone there had the sense to realize how destructive this was, but it is also an admission of wrongdoing of sorts. Either way, the data is now out there for anyone that wants to use (or abuse) it. Of course my work's stupid ISA server is screwing up again so most of the Internet for me is missing... | |
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lkviewguy
join:2004-02-13
Chicago, IL | I would imagine they didnt give the government any problems when they just asked for it. | |
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BloodRoses
Gods lend wings to tainted hearts
Premium
join:2003-03-17
clubs:
1 edit | AOL ftw. | |
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calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA | At least I'm not in there.... Wow. Sure glad I don't use AOL for searching.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! | |
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Jonbo298
join:2004-01-12
Council Bluffs, IA
| Downloading.. I just gotta see some of the interesting searches done by people 
Though AOL is gonna get ALOT of backlash..its just a matter of when considering its early monday morning and people are just now waking up to hopefully see this news. | |
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CtrlAltDel
WORSE. THAN. CARTER.
Arbitrary Text
join:2001-12-30
Backyard | It Is? Thanks to AOL, I learned something today,
Pornography is prevalent on the Web. Now I gotta learn how to find it.  | |
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ame101
join:2002-05-02
Southington, CT | Not all that shocking Why am I not shocked  . Was sort of funny to find 2 of my websites listed  . Jim | |
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Mike00
Premium
join:2002-09-16
Tulsa, OK | Re: Not all that shocking So they are going to make all their money through pop-up advertising? Is AOL going to be like NetZero when they first came out? How's this going to work? | |
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Spore Cloud
I H8 Computers
join:2001-09-09
Burleson, TX
| Retards. Who at AOL could have POSSIBLY thought that this was a good idea? A bunch of brain dead circus monkeys could run a company better than these rocket scientists can. They've already got world famous customer service »www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNhgjOxuTuU and now they can add top notch privacy protection to the list. Absolutely retarded. | |
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91439306
15,000 Watts of Bass Power
join:2002-10-16
New Milford, CT
| Re: Retards. As I listened to the CSR's objections in this video, my imagination started to run wild. I pictured an AOL CSR torture chamber, that for every customer allowed to cancel, the CSR gets one of his toenails yanked out by pliers.
The CSR sounded so terrified of letting this customer cancel, that it makes one wonder what sort of negative incentive AOL places on CSRs who allow cancellations. | |
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manfmmd
Premium
join:2003-01-14
Earth
clubs:
| Some interesting user searches... could be embarassing to say the least:
Users:
76917
250025
597555
24880492
24871589
24883086
24762095
24602908
Can you imagine the lawsuits if someone is able to connect the dots? These 8 users are from the 1st file and I only looked for a few minutes... It's a shame that some of this stuff can be found on the web. Talk about sick.
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huh? | AIM
Freedom of speech does not include the right to yell Allah Ackbar in a crowded theater. | |
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mr_cool
join:2003-10-14
USA | wow Man, those mirror servers are getting hammered- 30ish kbps on a 15mbps line
This is crazy, why would they do that | |
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| CiscoHQ
join:2006-01-27
US | Re: wow Someone needs to get this up on a torrent. | |
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Dude111
An Awesome Dude
Premium
join:2003-08-04
USA | AOL is stupid for storing the data on searchable directories!!! | |
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VikingStorm
join:2002-06-25
Omaha, NE
| Interesting... So all these bloggers also think it's ethical to mirror the search data? I mean AOL is evil, but it's like: "Look AOL is evil for releasing the information!!! Imagine what sinister things people could do if they connect the dots!! Here's 30 mirror links to it!." | |
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| Thaler
Premium
join:2004-02-02
Encino, CA
| Re: Interesting... said by VikingStorm  :So all these bloggers also think it's ethical to mirror the search data? I mean AOL is evil, but it's like: "Look AOL is evil for releasing the information!!! Imagine what sinister things people could do if they connect the dots!! Here's 30 mirror links to it!." Well, the genie is out of the bottle as of this moment, and blaming the "free" press for providing evidence of such won't do anything about it. Shooting the messenger gets you nowhere when the problem lies at the root. Had AOL not placed their head firmly up their ass regarding customer privacy, there would be no story or evidence of such. | |
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Rob A
Same Old Jets
Premium
join:2005-01-17
Pompton Plains, NJ | AOL... Never ceases to amaze me. | |
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brooklynman4
join:2004-09-07
Brooklyn, NY | Re: AOL... Wow lucky thing i canceled aol 3 months ago lol | |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| Re: AOL... said by brooklynman4 :Wow lucky thing i canceled aol 3 months ago lol they actually cancelled you????
are they still billing you?
how many hours were you on hold?
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You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth | |
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Rob A
Same Old Jets
Premium
join:2005-01-17
Pompton Plains, NJ
| said by brooklynman4 :Wow lucky thing i canceled aol 3 months ago lol Yeah, I canceled what must've been close to a year now.
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Spread Opera! The fast, sleek, and feature-rich browser! »opera.com
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itscomcastic
@65.91.x.x
| hmm Well.. really its not that big of a deal if you ask me.
If you think other sites aren't already tracking you and releasing information to various people you're probably pretty naive. its always best to assume that nothing is that private on the Internet (do a google for your handle here... or your name, for proof of that pudding).
All AOL did was release popular search keywords... why is this a big deal? Google not only releases popular keywords, they SELL keywords to advertisers (a process which requires them to give you a list with statistics...). | |
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Combat Chuck
Too Many Cannibals
Premium
join:2001-11-29
Erie, PA
1 edit | Re: hmm said by itscomcastic :
All AOL did was release popular search keywords... why is this a big deal? Google not only releases popular keywords, they SELL keywords to advertisers (a process which requires them to give you a list with statistics...).
The big deal is that AOL didn't have the foresight to consider that people might type their name, SSN, or CC numbers into the search box and hit enter, thus leaving traces of personally identifiable data.
And there is a huge difference between them selling the info to another company as outlined in their policies (who, one would hope, would be bound by contract to keep the raw data as proprietary information), and posting it to the public at large.
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gau gau | |
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flect
join:2006-05-31 | I'm not sure AOL is clear on the concept "It appears to be free" is the operative paradigm. | |
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pog
Premium
join:2004-06-03
Kihei, HI
 ·Hawaiian Telcom
| wow! According to »plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/···-murder/
*******Update***** Monday July 7th 10 AM PST AOL Officially comments in the comments section below.
Andrew Weinstein
All –
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.
Although there was no personally-identifiable data linked to these accounts, we’re absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize. We’ve launched an internal investigation into what happened, and we are taking steps to ensure that this type of thing never happens again.
Here was what was mistakenly released:
* Search data for roughly 658,000 anonymized users over a three month period from March to May.
* There was no personally identifiable data provided by AOL with those records, but search queries themselves can sometimes include such information.
* According to comScore Media Metrix, the AOL search network had 42.7 million unique visitors in May, so the total data set covered roughly 1.5% of May search users.
* Roughly 20 million search records over that period, so the data included roughly 1/3 of one percent of the total searches conducted through the AOL network over that period.
* The searches included as part of this data only included U.S. searches conducted within the AOL client software.
Our apologies again.
Andrew Weinstein
AOL Spokesperson
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