AOL causes a massive user privacy fiasco by releasing search terms of their subscribers

The problems for AOL never seem to end. The company faced a major PR issue when a video was released on the internet showcasing a voice conversation between a customer and a call center executive.

Now, the company is another major controversy related to user privacy. Time Warner’s internet division AOL released Internet search terms that more than 650,000 of its subscribers entered over a three-month period few days back.

However, the company failed to properly sanitize the results and as a result faced massive criticism from experts on the web. AOL has now admitted that the release originally meant for research was indeed a privacy breach and a mistake.

Lauren Weinstein, a privacy advocate spoke on this fiasco: “Search query data can contain the sum total of our work, interests, associations, desires, dreams, fantasies and even darkest fears.”

AOL accepted the mistake and said in a release: “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.”