Who's Apologizing Now?
AOL just can't get it right. They'd better apologize. We can hardly believe anyone still uses AOL. What a mess:
Aug 08 9:53 AM US/Eastern Email this story
AOL has apologized for posting 20 million keyword searches by more than 650,000 of its users on a research website violating company rules on privacy.
AOL has apologized for posting 20 million keyword searches by more than 650,000 of its users on a research website violating company rules on privacy.
Leading US newspapers reported that although the searches were identified by a anonymous user-ID numbers -- making identification difficult, the company said it had pulled the information it had collected from March to May off the website after bloggers became aware of it over the weekend.
It issued an apology for its unauthorized use of the search data and said it had launched an internal investigation to prevent further such mishaps and determine if disciplinary action is warranted.
"This was a screw-up and we're angry and upset about it," said AOL's statement quoted by The Washington Post.
"Although there was no personally-identifiable data linked to these accounts, we're absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize."
The search data was published in July on a new AOL website designed to help search-technology researchers.
