i've been reading about the aol snafu about releasing search data. if you haven't caught that yet, aol released some search data from 650K subscribers (wow, i didn't even realize people used aol search -- i'm assuming that is all from aol subscribers only) for research purposes. while they removed account-identifying information, it was clear that any intuitive person would be able to sift through the search results and identify trenst based on same user -- thus increasing probability of identifying that person.
aol has retracted and removed the data and offered an apology without trying to evade their logic -- they admitted what they did was wrong. kudos.
i couldn't help it and read more, and saw some links to the mirrors of the data. hey, i'm curious as well. on one of the sites i couldn't stop laughing when i read this:
Please mirror this file, and send me an Internet down the tubes by dialing <removed> so that I can include your link here.
lol, referring to senator stevens' comments about the internet tubes and when one of his staffers 'sent him an internet' -- holy crap i was laughing out loud reading someone starting to use that.
tags: aol, search, senator+stevens