AOL can't seem to catch a break. Just as it finally begins to make positive steps in the right direction, embarking on a monumental shift of its business model, the Time Warner unit shoots itself in
the foot. The gaffe: showing the world the search behavior of some 650,000 of its subscribers--exacerbated by the fact that almost as soon as the data was taken down, it reappeared on several blogs
and file-sharing sites. About 10 days ago, AOL posted the 440-meg downloadable file called "500Kusers.tgz" on a research Web site, research.aol.com. After several blogs started linking to it, the
company took it down--three or four days ago. The file contained 19 million queries made by those customers from March 1 to May 31. Many searches contained sensitive information, like users' real
names, social security numbers, etc. "The utter stupidity of this is staggering," writes
TechCrunch's Michael Arrington. "While the AOL user name has been changed to a random ID number, the
ability to analyze all searches by a single user will often lead people to easily determine who the user is, and what they are up to." The data contains searches for specific people, addresses,
telephone numbers, illegal drugs and more. In short, it's easy for law enforcement, employers or friends to figure out who some of these people are. All this adds up to another crippling image blow
for a company that needs some good PR right now. "AOL is hitting bottom when it comes to brand image," says Arrington. Barely two months ago, the company made headlines for barring its subscribers
from leaving the service. "This was a screw-up, and we're angry and upset about it," AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein told the
Associated Press. "It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to
the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted. If it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant."
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