AOL privacy fallout


Defining privacy rights
Michael Barbaro and Tom Zeller examine the aftermath.

But the detailed records of searches conducted by Ms. Arnold and 657,000 other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online, underscore how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves when they use search engines — and how risky it can be for companies like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data.

Those risks have long pitted privacy advocates against online marketers and other Internet companies seeking to profit from the Internet’s unique ability to track the comings and goings of users, allowing for more focused and therefore more lucrative advertising.

But the unintended consequences of all that data being compiled, stored and cross-linked are what Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group in Washington, called “a ticking privacy time bomb.”

Mr. Rotenberg pointed to Google’s own joust earlier this year with the Justice Department over a subpoena for some of its search data. The company successfully fended off the agency’s demand in court, but several other search companies, including AOL, complied. The Justice Department sought the information to help it defend a challenge to a law that is meant to shield children from sexually explicit material.

This raises all sorts of questions. I can see keeping the information on hand for a limited time. I can even see releasing information about a specific person or group of people to the government if there is a warrant. But I don't want anyone outside the search engines to be able to track the data.
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— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - August 9, 2006 at 07:58 AM  Tag


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