Why Might AOL’s Data Release Be A Big, Big Problem?

TechCrunch thinks there could be privacy breaches as people look up personal info which can then be correlated to their other searches.

    “Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment. Combine them with “buy ecstasy” and you have evidence of a crime. Combine it with an address, social security number, etc., and you have an identity theft waiting to happen. The possibilities are endless.”

As of 10pm Sunday night, AOL took down both the data and pages that referred to it.

However, the data has already been downloaded numerous times and passed around. Peoples are racing to develop easily searchable databases.

They might come across the entry for User 17556639 who searched for: “how to kill your wife,” “wife killer,” “how to kill a wife” and “poop.”

Scatological murderer or niche-interest crime screenwriter? The possibilities are endless with the power of conjecture.

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