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The Face of One AOL Searcher Exposed
Juha-Matti Laurio writes "No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from "numb fingers" to "60 single men" to "dog that urinates on everything., report NYT journalists Michael Barbaro and Tom Zeller Jr., but with a permission from Mrs. Thelma Arnold, 62. "Those are my searches," she said, after a reporter read part of the list to her, continues the article."
"60 single men"
At her age. I think she should be happy with a couple, but 60... gotta admire her!
User 48956332 Perl For Dummies
User 48956332 HTML 4, whats the big deal
User 48956332 Howto use sandboxen in development
User 48956332 What is CSS
User 48956332 Unit testing
User 48956332 Spelcheking
User 48956332 Why is Digg growing so fast?
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Didn't take too long before it leaked all over the place, eh?
http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com/
Scully: Should we arrest David Copperfield?
Mulder: Yes we should, but not for this.
But at least it looks like my code isn't the only place invaded by quote-abducting aliens.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Asked about Ms. Arnold, an AOL spokesman, Andrew Weinstein, reiterated the companys position that the data release was a mistake. We apologize specifically to her, he said. There is not a whole lot we can do.
What a load... there is plenty you can do AOL. You can promise not to release this data again, you can actively hunt for it on the web. You can promise to delete your copy. You can promise that you won't keep data like this anymore. You can implement better security policies so that you know where your data is, and what is hapenning with it. You can limit the people who have access to posting stuff on your website.
Useless bastards!
I guess this just goes to show that you should be using something like Torpark even when merely conducting an online search. It's a shame but if you value your privacy, I guess it's necessary.
Keep those IPs changing so they can't track and accumulate your searches I guess. I don't want a dossier of my searches available to the public.
My work here is dung.
Well nearly everyone said this would end up being a privacy nightmare and it looks like nearly everyone was right. With one found, how many more AOL users are going to be found now? More importantly, how many people will stay with AOL after this?
So many choices, so little tolerance.
In other words, the journalists tracked down about 20 AOL searchers, but Mrs Arnold was the only one to give permission for the article as hers was the only search term list that didn't include 'midget porn'.
I don't know how the NYT reporters were able to track her down. After all, this describes most AOL users!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
this is the exact reason i use anonet! its not just AOL keeping records.
Now what kind of legal recourse can people expect from these search results? Can the man who searched for ways to kill his wife be tracked down? How about all of the paedophiles who searched for child pr0n? Oh, I can just see all of the "Come on AOL, think of the children...tell us who that was..." How closely tied are these numbers to the user's AOL Accounts, I mean, I'm sure AOL left themselves some tie to the user in their copy. What's stopping feds from making many major busts on people?
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
I hope this issue brings more awareness to people about internet anonymity in general and that the government wants all your logs and that companies like Verizon roll over and let them have it.
e rs-free-security
AOL has went one step further and given their customer's information to the world. I googled the news to see if this story is being reported in the mainstream media, and it is minimally (minimal b/c of TimeWarner?) but I have to laugh as it is characterized as a "goof" and a "gaffe". Laughably understated and nice words for something that at best can be described as sheer bumbling negligence and at worst as a breach of privacy of the worst sort.
Even more ironic, the first news story to pop up on google has nothing to do with this but is:
"AOL offers free security software"
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2161980/aol-off
Quick, make a bunch of bogus searches! That way you will have some plausible deniability when The Man knocks on your door with a list of your searches.
"Officer, those searches can't be mine, I'm not an 18 year old lesbian movie actress!"
At the end of the article, she says she's cancelling her AOL account as a result.
She shouldn't. There's absolutely no way AOL will ever do anything like that again. On the other hand, if she switches to another online provider, who still hasn't been burned, it's a quite a bit more likely they'll screw up like this as well. She'd be "safer" staying at AOL.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Now if she repeats the searches, she'll find links to his own face.
Where am I?
You're on AOL.
What do you want?
Search information.
Whose side are you on?
That would be telling. We want information. Information. Information.
You won't get it.
By hook or by crook, we will.
Who are you?
The new ad-funded AOL Number 2.
Who is Number 1?
You are Number 4417749.
I am not a number -- I am a free gran!
Why is it that whenever a big company blatantly violates the law, they get away with a few users boycotting them for a while, but when big business is slightly victimized, all hell breaks lose, laws are changed in their favor and individuals' lives get ruined? Sue AOL. Make them pay. Nothing says sorry like a multi-million dollar cheque.
It would not surprise me to see government or corporate-funded research into "intelligent buddies" - programs that are the descendendants of "Clippy" or "Bob" that are actually sophisticated enough to be more useful than annoying. Once we're immersed in ubiquitous computing, they can be active participants in any conversation or activity, chiming in with juicy morsels of pertinent trivia, jokes, gossip or actual useful information - cool enough that everybody would always want them on. They could be released free of cost, and beyond providing surveillance into the minds of these users as well as the people they interact with, they can provide a mechanism for actively steering social development. Say a troubled teen starts talking with his chums about how much of a drag everything is - his "intelligent buddy" can tell a story about some other teen, perhaps one who lives nearby, who had a similar situation and suggest setting up a meeting. Turns out the other troubled teen has been persuaded to start doing volunteer work and was surprised to find this made life less of a drag. Naturally, a corporate-funded IB would suggest the nearest place to grab a bottle of Spazzy-Cola as soon as it detects thirst.
21528558 http com yahoo com wont hurt wont yahoo 2006-04-21 15:31:20
I'm amazed by the masses of stupid search strings that are given, why are so many search strings complete (or non working) http adresses? (e.g. www.yahoo.com) Seems like a lousy database to me anyway.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
From AOL's public apology
"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..."
This is sounding very much like Dilbert's boss's public apology made years ago:
"It was wrong for us to sell keyboards with no 'Q' We're sorry. We're morons. We're dumber than squirrels. We hear voices and do what they command. I have broccoli in my socks. "
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
4417749 numb fingers
4417749 60 single men
4417749 dog that urinates on everything
4417749 landscapers in Lilburn, Ga
4417749 bill arnold
4417749 carpet shampoo rental
4417749 julie arnold
4417749 stan arnold
4417749 homes sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia
4417749 gwinnet county animal services
4417749 stan arnold
4417749 pecan pie recipes
4417749 McGyver DVDs
4417749 pet euthanasia services
What?
"60 single men"
Wow! That's quite a few.
You go, gran.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Now, what can we do?
How about making sure "this conversation" happens, and continues to happen.
And not just here on /.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Why Google made such a fight out of the government's request for similar information, even if anonymized. It isn't a harmless request. I mean, the particular search identified in the article isn't a big deal, but some of the others that are in there are rather scary/personal, to say the least. Out of millions, I expect this pattern is normal.
As goofs go, this is a biggie, but an instructive one that will hopefully serve as a wakeup call. If the government were requesting something like this, it is as invasive as a library turning over a carefully-tracked list of patron searches that would be one ISP subpoena away from being personally identifiable. It's basically one huge fishing ground.
Here's an interesting search to add to Google's history database.
:)
What's even more interesting is the eBay ad offering to sell this.
Why is online anonymity so hard to come by? It seems that every service I use on the web keeps logs and statistics, and there always seems to be some trail linking me to whatever I've done online. Perhaps there are searches and discussions I've had online that I don't want a potential employer to come across, for example. No matter how careful I may be, I never feel too confident that I've been successfully shielded by anonymity.
It would be nice to see more online services that at least make an effort to maintain your anonymity. How about a proxy that will do all your google searches from a set of hundreds of random IP addresses, selecting a new one each time and never connecting the searches to one another? Or how about an ISP that gives you a new, random IP address on request, and keeps NO LOGS of who had which IP in the past?
There are two obstacles to this - first, the average joe doesn't think too carefully about anonymity, so the demand for such services is low. Second, there are legal issues regarding what information would be recorded. It would be very interesting to see the RIAA come to the ISP in my above example and request the account information of a file trader. What would happen if they literally had no logs and no way of telling which user had been using that IP? It seems like they might get in trouble, but why should they? Grocery stores aren't required to keep careful logs of each person walking through their doors. Don't ISPs have the same right to allow people to come and go?
60 single men means that she wants 60 men, one at a time!
http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com/
I did a search on there this morning, and it displays the SQL statement for me, which is very handy...
Select SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * from search_data WHERE match (anon_id,query,click_url) against ('4417749 ') LIMIT 0,30
Interestingly, if you do the standard SQL injection, searching for something like "4417749') LIMIT 0,30; DROP TABLE SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS;--", I bet you will screw it up for them. Kids, don't try this at home. I'd never encourage people to do something illegal!
The point of this posting is:
Learn about SQL Injection, and protect against it.
Don't display your SQL query to your users.
If you don't know what SQL injection is, try a simple example: Search for "1','0" (skip the double quotes, but not the single quotes) and you'll see it in action without causing harm.
Something just dawned on me.
Security and privacy is a concern. All the tech savvy bloggers, lawyers and post whores (us) have known for quite some time that what you search for or what you do on the internet directly relates to you. It can be stolen or used against your will. But the normal person blindly searches "teenage donkey porn" thinking since no one is watching over their shoulder no one can see.
Then comes AOL. A failing social network that Time Warner is struggling to keep above water. In this company is a person who convinces the higher ups that "we should distribute this for research purposes"...
Then bam. Everyone knows.. When you make a NYT article, that has deduced your searches to find you, you know you are in the public eye.
I am here to argue that AOL did us privacy advocates a favor (and further, maybe on purpose). Perhaps the next time the government (DOJ) says: "we are trying to get searches from yahoo, google and MS" Maybe someone who can defend us will remember this.
So why on purpose? The DoJ is pounding down googles door for searches. No one ever mentions AOL's searches because... they are hosted by google. (and 5% of AOL is owned by google). AOL releases 650k+ users searches, enough to notice. But Google has been rather quite in this whole argument.
The Point: Google used AOL to get main stream media attention on net privacy issues.
but why in the hell can't the CIA find Osama?
Obviously she doesn't care that she can be linked to those search terms and I don't see why she would have to be. Anyone who would take the effort to get to know her would get to know these things. Privacy is about things people want to keep private, not about the amount of information you let be free.
Until she tries to stop her AOL service! Now THAT should be a lawsuit!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
After reading through all of the 0+ modded comments, I've seen everyone saying "God, I wish there was something that could be done to stop this from happening again". You want to see it stop? Find something that ties your local congressmen to their search histories on AOL. Contact them with that information. I can almost guarantee you that if you find enough dirt on enough congressmen/senators, you'll see legislation passed requiring that Search companies not keep records of searches. It quickly changes from "Think of the children" to "Think of saving my ass from dirt that can be used against me next election year"
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
two weeks ago i had forgotten aol even existed... and now they've got their name all over the internet. this comes in the face of big changes there- including giving away email and webservices for free now: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6099072.html
they say any publicity is good publicity, but i'm not so sure if i can agree in this case. this is a desperate attempt for aol to get their name back out there. if aol wasn't doomed before, i think this "stunt" should just about do it for them.
I for one am glad that someone's identity was found from all of this, and I am glad that people are still able to go through that database of searches. Before anything will change, unfortunately, some big things are going to have to happen. I hope more people are identified and that it creates a media storm. Most people don't know or care about this story yet, and if they do hear about it they'll go 'oh, the information was taken down. and it's not me. ok then.' and they'll go on with their lives.
Someone important needs to be identified by their searches, and sue. In fact, it would be best of many people sued. And I hate to be so cynical, but the only way I see any real changes being made by AOL and other search engines would be if someone were identified by their searches, and something terrible happened to them as a result. I feel sorry for the person who this will inevitably happen to, but I also hope that a good change will come about as a result.
"if only i had known i would have been a locksmith." -albert einstein
"We acknowledged that there was information that could potentially lead to people being identified, which is why we were so angry."
No, actually, what you said was:
"Although there was no personally identifiable data linked to these accounts,..."
That is pretty much the opposite of acknowledging that there was information that could potentially lead to people being identified.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Yeah and we all should squirt ourselves full of KY jelly in case some space aliens want to anal probe us.
If a couple of clueless newspaper reporter can track somebody down that quickly via AOL search records, Imagine what the NSA or the DOJ could do. What's even scarier, imagine what foriegn intellegence agencies or drug cartels could do target individuals that annoy them. Probably this is good, too many people have a false sense of anonymity on the net, now we have a chance to know what they know.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In Google News and Groups I get suggestions: you should read this ...
Often it refers to accesses in other sections of google, rather than
than the section I am reading now. I guesss it does this with gmail too,
though I dont use that part.
You raise an important and oft-overlooked point.
This is exactly why I think it's so critical to evangelize with regard to using privacy measures. I want my mother, Aunt Sally, and 8-year old neice to be using TrueCrypt and Tor at a minimum (or, something providing similar functionality). Privacy / anonymity suites need to become as commonplace as antivirus, firewall and anti-spam software.
Helping strong privacy measures become the status-quo serves other important goals too. It makes it more politically costly to try to legislate them out of use, and it reduces the usefulness of developing new data mining programs that require person:transaction relationships - both for the government and for private industry.
In short, when everyone's Aunt Sally can be expected to have countermeasures against activity monitoring running on her home PC, the world will have become a safer place for all of us.
Pi Ran Out
While she was looking into helping a friend stop smoking, Happy AOL User 17556639>
was busily researching how to off his troublesome wife.
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 wife killer
17556639 how to kill a wife
17556639 poop
17556639 dead people
17556639 pictures of dead people
17556639 killed people
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 murder photo
17556639 steak and cheese
Is someone gonna take the time to track this whacko down, or just concentrate on the low hanging fruit (i.e., little old ladies)?
A message from our sponsor
In this picture we cannot see Mrs. Thelma Arnold of Lilburn, Georgia. Mrs. Arnold will you stand up please....
Bullshit. If they were afraid of consequences it wouldn't have gotten out in the first place. One would have thought "AOL wouldn't dare releasing my personal information to the world" about 8 months ago, but whoops, they did.
Now, if they're suddenly hit with a barrage of lawsuits or a nice, really big, juicy class-action... perhaps that'll teach them. If there aren't any consequence, they'll likely do it again if it means making a quick buck.
...maybe it was an author....doing research...
Searching for kiddy pr0n in a search engine... sounds like a great way to leave traces around. But then, AOL users aren't generally held as all that smart.
On the other hand, what if you were getting a lot of illegal smut ads in your inbox? Less clueful users might decide to go look up such a thing in the search engine, trying to find AOL's policy on it or some way to keep it from the inbox.
Wishful thinking of course, as I don't doubt some people were searching for actual material... but not necessarily all of 'em.
AOL is a company that is going down the drain. They are at a point where they do not care one little bit about consumers. They are now trying to milk the last bits worth money before they go into the great mist. This was not a mistake and they are not sorry for doing it. This is a first of many bad things to come.
would mostly go to the lawyers, since this would be a class action suit.
Imagine how much a marketing company would pay for that info from AOL with the personal details for each user included (i.e. Age, Sex, location etc.)
I would have thought that knowing what a person is interested in, therefore likely to buy, is more useful than knowing their demographic, therefore what they are supposedly likely to buy. The age of someone will tell you if they theoretically prefer cola or wine, for example, but if they regularly search for wine related topics, knowing their age becomes irrelevant. Although I can see the advantage of knowing the name and contact details of the individual when you're trying to sell things to them.
I thought this was the whole advantage to advertising to people based on what they search for: you know what they are actually interested in buying, rather than theoretically interested in buying.
When I read about the concerns of people post-story, it seems to me that they aren't focusing on the right problem. Throughout time, there's always been a sense of "big brother" watching over a people. In a time of easily accessed information and poorly managed governments, we're just finding out more and more about this watchfulness. Still the question among concerned people is "How is our privacy being abused?" when I believe it should be "Now that I know they have my information, how can they use it against me?"
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on television, but doesn't this essentially say that any information gleaned from this database cannot be used since a warrant wasn't first issued to get it? Could this then therefore mean that any public dumps of information about us cannot be used in a court to prosecute us?
If this is the case then the only thing we can use this information for is to protect ourselves from the people it describes AND for the people it describes, there are now a lot more people who can figure out on their own what you're doing. So stop if it's "bad" or go figure out a better way to do it!
You made my day
User ID Search Keywords Date Website
14476047 canine hearing aids 2006-03-13 20:10:50 http://www.listen-up.org/
14476047 harlem globetrotters.com 2006-03-22 21:39:33
14476047 harlem globetrotters.com 2006-03-22 21:39:47
14476047 splinter cell 2006-03-22 21:45:41 http://www.splintercell.com/
14476047 pacreas 2006-03-27 05:19:27
14476047 ounces to quarts 2006-04-06 16:09:39 http://www.metric-conversions.org/
14476047 ounces to quarts 2006-04-06 16:09:39 http://www.metric-conversions.org/
14476047 ounces to quarts 2006-04-06 16:09:39 http://www.free-gourmet-recipes.com/
14476047 roy rogers 2006-04-08 09:33:37 http://www.roy-rogers.com/
14476047 portuguese fireman. com 2006-04-21 21:35:01 http://www.portuguesefireman.com/
--Chag
None of the users searched for me... How depressing. Although one guy (or gal) searched for ew.google.comwww.google.cojm. I contacted google and they said they don't use the .cojm extension. also note 318 pages for google results.
This is very scary data, though also chock full of interesting info, interesting taken in many different ways. It was easy to find a number of people referencing my small home town of about 20,000 people. The data in general looks quite dangerous. Read on, there are two people who are on the verge of suicide it seems.
Suffice it to say, the data is FULL of personally identifying information. And if you search for a given ID you can follow their trains of thought over time and it can be shattering; everyone looks for their own family online. AOL should hire some clueful people and get them into the loop, but it's too late for some people.
Incidentally, I found one of the most interesting words is "should". That, and "cocktail dresses" but I'm not going to get into that one. You see it turns out that not only do people sometimes unintentionally paste info from mail or webpages into the search field, they also ask questions that normally they might just write on paper and throw in the trash, or give up worrying about. So what AOL has done is closer to taping a confessional, what someone might ask of God or their doctor, or just worry endlessly about, and release it! What infants! It seems to say something about why doctors and priests have a professional code and know how to keep things private. Here are some search phrases, I'm not putting any in that have a person's name but you can probably get the idea from this.
what the fuck should i name my fetus
my nose is bleeding from cocaine what should i do
baby has something stuck in his foot what should i do
my mom is a hooker what should i do
how to tell a wife her husband is having an affair with you
caught my wife cheating
my wife cheated on me with a guy with a huge cock now what
spy on the wife
get revenge from a wife cheater
catch your wife having an affair
my cheating wife
got caught cheating on my wife and now she trying to take my kids away
my wife and kids are living with an ex con
very sexy baby nice pics i wanna c more lol u should take a look at my pic s tell me what ya think if u wanna chat my yahoo is lets get it mane and my aim is mhsplaya8
should a spouse stay married to a sex addict
should i let my son inlaw fuck me
i should have used a condom
dude read this its reallllly weird body hi. my name is kimi. it's too late now. you shouldn't have opened this bulletin but since you did you will die tonight if you dont keep reading. well i'm 19. i don't have eye lashes and i dont have a nose. pr
what should i do about heart palpitations after smoking crack
should a man go to a strip club the girlfriend is upset
should i see a married man
should i tell the other man's wife
should i confront my wife's adultery partner
mom showed me how to masterbate
why my girlfriend should give me head
should i buy extended warranty on my laptop
an employee jokes all day long what should i do
should parents let their children become stars
my son inlaw asked me for a handjob
l want some pill to dead
l want to kill myself pill sleep
i want to kill myself
should i kill myself
i need someone to help me before i kill myself
help no one loves me i want to kill myself
best way to kill myself
i want to kill myself indiana hotline
l need to talk with a fbi
should informants be identified
Now maybe people will understand what AOL has done.
I am posting this because:
I should search for those terms using AOL. It would put anyone who looks at the logs WAY off the trail because I'm not even married.
Like the molesters out there. Just something I found while grepping through the information.
<happiness>beer</happiness>
Without cookieIDs but you still get to see web searches.
I used to see tons of URLs in the web search. Enough so, that it was clear to me that people were confusing a search entry box for the URL entry box.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
user 21276481 is either fucked up, a republican, or both.
I always referred to this as the Google Time Bomb -- that moment when all (or a significant portion) of Google's query data got leaked into public and our true selves were revealed to the world. But I guess AOL beat them to the punch.
Two lessons:
1. Don't use subscriber-based search services
2. Change your IP address early and often
Finally, google your name in conjunction with church-friendly terms in your spare time just for good measure.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
lastgoogle query data is also available to the world:
s ets
http://lastgoogle.pbwiki.com/Last%20Google%20Data
Unfortunately, the data doesn't include the AOL subscriber numbers of the searchers, so its research value is limited.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
Hmm, this anonymous user always searches for directions from 5 Main St, Anytown USA. If only the search company would release their identity....
I read that right - correct? Mrs - as in married Mrs. is searching for single men...hmmmmm
This is very scary data, though also chock full of interesting info, interesting taken in many different ways. It was easy to find a number of people referencing my small home town of about 20,000 people. I shiver to imagine say a wife using AOL at home and her geek husband searching this stuff at work (not my problem).
Suffice it to say, the data is FULL of personally identifying information. AOL is not telling the truth. Heck, Google even gives you an address if you give it a phone number, people are used to typing people's names into the search box. And if you search for a given ID you can follow their trains of thought over time and it can be shattering; everyone looks for their own family online.. I even found an unknown relative that way once. AOL should hire some clueful people and get them into the loop, but it's too late for some people.
Incidentally, I found one of the most interesting words is "should". That, and "cocktail dresses" but I'm not going to get into that one. You see it turns out that not only do people sometimes unintentionally paste info from mail or webpages into the search field, they also ask questions that normally they might just write on paper and throw in the trash, or give up worrying about. So what AOL has done is closer to taping a confessional, what someone might ask of God or their doctor, or just worry endlessly about, and release it! What infants! It seems to say something about why doctors and priests have a professional code and know how to keep things private. Here are some search phrases, I'm not putting any in that have a person's name but you can probably get the idea from this.
what the fuck should i name my fetus
my nose is bleeding from cocaine what should i do
baby has something stuck in his foot what should i do
my mom is a hooker what should i do
how to tell a wife her husband is having an affair with you
caught my wife cheating
my wife cheated on me with a guy with a huge cock now what
spy on the wife
get revenge from a wife cheater
catch your wife having an affair
my cheating wife
got caught cheating on my wife and now she trying to take my kids away
my wife and kids are living with an ex con
very sexy baby nice pics i wanna c more lol u should take a look at my pic s tell me what ya think if u wanna chat my yahoo is lets get it mane and my aim is mhsplaya8
should a spouse stay married to a sex addict
should i let my son inlaw fuck me
i should have used a condom
dude read this its reallllly weird body hi. my name is kimi. it's too late now. you shouldn't have opened this bulletin but since you did you will die tonight if you dont keep reading. well i'm 19. i don't have eye lashes and i dont have a nose. pr
what should i do about heart palpitations after smoking crack
should a man go to a strip club the girlfriend is upset
should i see a married man
should i tell the other man's wife
should i confront my wife's adultery partner
mom showed me how to masterbate
why my girlfriend should give me head
should i buy extended warranty on my laptop
an employee jokes all day long what should i do
should parents let their children become stars
l want some pill to dead
l want to kill myself pill sleep
i want to kill myself
should i kill myself
i need someone to help me before i kill myself
help no one loves me i want to kill myself
best way to kill myself
i want to kill myself indiana hotline
god please my heart hurts help
l need to talk with a fbi
should informants be identified
Now maybe people will understand what AOL has done.
I am posting this because:
5031621 can i connect to aol useing linux 2006-03-20 23:13:49 5031621 can i connect to aol using linux 2006-03-20 23:14:36 1 http://yolinux.com/ 5031621 how do i connect aol with linux 2006-03-21 17:35:01 1 http://yolinux.com/ 5031621 how do i connect aol with linux 2006-03-21 17:35:01 2 http://yolinux.com/ 5031621 how do i connect aol with linux 2006-03-21 21:09:08 3 http://www-jerry.oit.duke.edu/ 5031621 aol for linux 2006-03-25 23:28:02 1 http://yolinux.com/ 5031621 linux 2006-04-19 13:10:43 5031621 how do i add a modom to a linux system 2006-04-19 13:11:25 5031621 how do i add a modem to a linux system 2006-04-19 13:13:55 2 http://www.aboutdebian.com/ 5031621 linuxmodoms.com 2006-04-19 21:11:18 5031621 linux games 2006-04-26 21:29:56 1 http://www.linuxgames.com/
Sorry for me spell bad, not a native but I'll do my best
Oops - now it seems I should have read the rest of this thread - it seems that there are date/time stamps with the data, as someone has posted a list of searches with them. So - what are the timestamps for the "lookin' to kill ma wife...mmm, steak-and-cheese" searcher's terms? Are they in datetime order? If so, then it just becomes all the more weird why they would search for "poop" and "steak and cheese" right in the middle. Does anyone have an explanation for this (other than "they are stark raving looney", please)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
For those that don't know, the "Hearing Aid" service was depicted in Brunner's dystopia as a service people could call (via phone) and just talk, rant, pray, confess, tell, etc - and the service would never talk back, never judge - just listen. The caller would hang up when done, hopefully with a clearer conscience (or something). The book goes on to tell that it wasn't just a machine that picked up and "listened", but rather actual people, and that people who would call would try to get the "Hearing Aid" staffers to respond back, but they wouldn't - it was a feature of the service: a place you could call and confess your darkest sins or desires to a real human being without fear of retribution.
This is not really a new thing though, with people "confessing sins" or attempting to get salvation or understanding from a machine (or crys for help, etc) - look into the history of Joseph Weizenbaum's Eliza chatbot - reviewing the log's of the chat sessions between real people and the machine, Weizenbaum found that people would talk to the chatbot as if it were a real psychologist, which was understandable since this was how Eliza was designed to "respond as", like a psychologist talking to a patient. Although, in some cases, knowing that it was a machine they would even tell it things that they wouldn't even tell another human!
Are search engines now the new form of "Eliza"?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Heck, I figured that half the searches would be "how to unsubscribe from AOL".
Obviously a little conflicted young fundamentalist is:
359557 worlds most beautiful ass 2006-03-01 17:59:52
359557 thongdreams.com 2006-03-01 18:01:00 1 http://www.thongdreams.com/
359557 proof of the resurrection of jesus 2006-03-04 20:16:07 4 http://www.christiancrafters.com/
359557 did jesus have a sense of humor 2006-03-06 16:25:25 2 http://www.biblebb.com/
359557 world's sexiest women 2006-03-13 17:08:28
359557 online seminary 2006-03-14 17:09:20 4 http://www.fuller.edu/
359557 www.oversized-erect-nipples 2006-04-07 18:35:49
359557 gospel of judas 2006-04-10 19:43:41 5 http://en.wikipedia.org/
359557 long-pointy-tits 2006-04-14 19:38:41
This homie is doing is part to go against stereotypes
390569 www.golgteethus.com 2006-03-12 15:02:16
390569 www.golgteethus.com 2006-03-12 15:03:12
390569 www.goldteethus 2006-03-12 15:04:55
390569 thick ass ho.com 2006-03-12 17:15:28 5 http://www.studioann.com/
390569 thick ass ho.com 2006-03-12 17:15:28 5 http://www.studioann.com/
390569 jewelrytelevision 2006-03-12 20:45:43 1 http://www.jewelrytelevision.com/
390569 18k white gold 2006-03-12 20:53:12
390569 all dat azz 2006-03-14 13:13:51 1 http://www.alldatazz.com/
390569 booty registry 2006-03-14 13:33:42 1 http://bootyregistry.com/
390569 ghetto gaggers 2006-03-14 20:08:14
390569 worlds biggest anaconda 2006-03-17 17:36:51 4 http://www.coopsjokes.com/
390569 long rope chains 2006-03-18 11:58:08 10 http://www.bestcrystals.com/
390569 known snitches 2006-03-18 15:30:14 1 http://www.gorillaconvict.com/
390569 hunters point homicides 2006-03-18 15:47:24 5 http://www.sfgate.com/
390569 hiphopmugshots 2006-03-22 20:58:53
390569 blackgirljunk 2006-03-26 03:04:46
390569 fbi most wanted 2006-03-26 09:46:37 3 http://www.mugshots.com/
390569 bigblackho 2006-03-26 09:51:00
390569 ak47 2006-03-18 16:29:59 2 http://world.guns.ru/
390569 san francisco mugshots 2006-03-27 13:20:06
390569 phat ho 2006-03-27 16:20:30
Sometimes life is just hard
353435 dealing with stressful situations 2006-03-24 14:05:50 1 http://www.studygs.net/
353435 los angeles county jail 2006-03-25 02:17:25 1 http://app1.lasd.org/
353435 womens los angeles county jail 2006-03-25 02:20:49
353435 women's los angeles county jail 2006-03-25 02:21:25
353435 finding an los angeles women inmate 2006-03-25 02:22:06
353435 la county jail 2006-03-25 02:22:47
Dirty girl...
393796 planned parenthood nj 2006-03-25 13:59:08 6 http://www.ppgnnj.org/
393796 family planning centers 2006-03-25 14:00:29
393796 is constipation normal after 2 weeks from taking ecp 2006-03-02 21:03:50 7 http://www.ithaca.edu/
393796 vagina itchy is it from ecp 2006-03-02 21:07:40 1 http://www.spiderbytes.ca/
This site is a treasure trove. Let me play with it a little more. Republicans, Democrats, Evolution, Intelligent Design, so many comparisons to make, so little time!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In this site some more scores: Democrats: 8 hits Republicans 5. Evolution: 47 Bible 326. Constitution: 22. Jesus: 82 Vishnu: 0 What does it all mean?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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A horny drug-addicted hobo or just a misunderstood hippy? You be the judge!
And forget these guys. http://www.blackboxsearch.com/
What they should have done is taken the user IDs out and semi-automatically anonymize a subset of the queries for release.
There is at least one PhD thesis that uses the AOL data (by Eric Jensen, see this link).
grep "[0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]" *.txt
Aside from the many SSNs resulting from this search, there are good number of names, addresses, and phone numbers in the same query! Hello, identity fraud?
I hope some major lawsuits result from this and AOL dishes out some major payola for this mistake.
There is the slight possibility that someone at AOL actually has a conscience and did this intentionally to highlight the detail which these databases can yield on common, everyday people. I mean, really, how likely is it that after the AT&T/NSA/etc. wiretapping scandals that a huge corp like AOL would allow something like this to actually happen given the probable public opinion damage? This "goof" has woken up a lot more people than the theoretical privacy rants from computer geeks every time some government agency is caught with their hand in the cookie jar. This hits close to home in a way that is very easy for the general public to grasp.
Method of processing duck feet
Her search history.
what does "sks" mean? I appear to be out of this particular loop. Hopefully, that's a good thing.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
The top ten searchers are:
Searches UserID
279430 71845
8695 2263543
8274 23187425
7545 117514
7313 5288646
6925 3318459
5981 18350315
5847 11112937
5845 2359287
5165 42075
#71845 is the big winner here. My favorite of his so far "how to be a crime stopper on the internet and get paid for it".
It's a gun, a Russian gun. Seriously though, what is so fucked up and Republican about collector's weapons?
AOL users are morons! Wait you already knew that.
I searched for "http://www.google.com" and got 525 pages of results. Why do people get the address bar and the search bar so confused?
her latest searches!
User 4417749 how to cancel AOL
User 4417749 beligerent customer service reps
User 4417749 how can I really cancel AOL
Data poisoning is a good thing. If these entities are going to mind data against the wishes of their "targets", the least the target can do is make it make their job that much harder.
Truecrypt is easy to use and should be used when needed (storage).
However, Tor is a PITA and its effectiveness is debatable. Even if it reaches 100% effectiveness, it is not something everyone can and will do regardless of technical experience.
OTOH, data poisoning is one rudimentary step everyone can take (plus it can be fun) to undermine the miners attempt at building a realistic profile.
No, it's not an answer to the problem. Though, it is a good first step until a truly workable answer has been found.
Mod parent up, it deserves to be seen.
However, I don't think you should worry too much about user's who you believe are suicidal, and I don't think AOL should be tracking *anybody* down. I could easily imagine doing those searches without seriously wanting to kill myself, which is why this entire situation is scary and does need to be legislated (as you've said).
PS: you included somebody's AIM id in that, bad juju.
What's your GCNSEQNO?
They're trying to recreate perl -t ?
There's the understatement of the year.
Just discovered that someone or something had been searching for me! my own name popped up as a search term! wooHoo I now have an online stalker! How popular am I!
I can understand that the problem here is a breach of trust because most people believed that their searches were private, but I need some convincing as to whether or not this information deserves to be private.
I mean, honestly, if you give a query to anyone--say you go to your neighbor and ask them a few questions in private--what is to stop them from telling anyone else about the questions were you were asking them? In this case, you already understand the situation and know how things like that are going to go down; you wouldn't ask them if they had any midget porn because you know people are going to be talking. Also, what if someone went up to you and said, "I want to ask you something, but you have to promise not to tell anyone that I did." I don't know about you, but I would refuse outright because I don't keep secrets with strangers.
So long as people understood that searching was a public affair, no one would be complaining. I can understand that anonymity on the internet is DESIRED because we've been used to a high degree of it, but why is anonymity on the net necessary or even healthy for society? There is a fine line between what is private and what is public--too much of either leads to an unhealthy social situation. Sometimes I feel like people enjoy a little too much privacy, especially when the internet is concerned. What we are witnessing right now is a natural balancing act as society and technology grow and adapt to one another.
hold the f#ck up u know what lil bitch i dont even fu# with your dirty ass no more. your lil ugly ass wanna act funny toward me when i am susposed to be your friend you start acting funny and acting like you dont kno me and shit but bitch thats cool ev
Here at http://aol.zanoza.lv/ we tag and discuss AOL users. Several are already identified.
On the flip side, consider the importance of Information Retrieval research/progress. Search is here to stay & growing-- internet search, email search, library search, etc. All our lives can benefit from great search inventions, like Google, PageRank, etc.
Now, the #1 best way to get this research focussed on real problems to make the best progress is to have lots of researchers able to examine & learn from real data. Working from a small scale dataset just won't get us very far.
The researchers invovlved thought that anonymizing the userID would be sufficient, but it turns out that some *small* fraction of the users can still be identified, and that creates a PR problem for AOL, unfortunately. These people could use some understanding for their mistake & support from reasonable people.
Rather than go rabid against AOL, let's encourage AOL/etc. to release large scale data through an opt-in policy or something. It's in all of our best interests.
-A researcher @ the Information Retrieval conference www.sigir2006.org