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Execs at AOL Approved Release of Private Data?
reporter writes "The New York Times has published a report providing further details about the release of private AOL search queries to the public. According to the report: 'Dr. Jensen, who said he had worked closely with Mr. Chowdhury on projects for AOL's search team, also said he had been told that the posting of the data had been approved by all appropriate executives at AOL, including Ms. [Maureen] Govern.' The report also identifies the other two people whom AOL management fired: they are Abdur Chowdhury and his immediate supervisor. Chowdhury is the employee who did the actual public distribution of the private search queries. He, apparently, has retained a lawyer."
Almost everything a company does, especially publicly has to have multiple stamps of approval. Can't even order a pencil without paperwork. Right now AOL is headhunting for scapegoats to sacrifice to appease the masses. This had to have nearly everybody OKing it, if it was a mistake it would have gotten yanked back a LOT faster and legal actions would be pending, they aren't threatening anybody yet because they probably don't want their own records being pulled out and becoming massivly liable.
Not at all sure about why they thought it was a good idea, they must have thought the ID numbers were sufficient to conceal identities which also shows the lack of security knowledge most executives have.
- Sacked for gross incompetence
- Left after being used as a scapegoat
The point of most unfair dismissal actions is not the money, it's the CV.init 11 - for when you need that edge.
>>> so correct me if I'm wrong
You're wrong.
The IP address or user name of the person who searched has been removed, but it was replaced with a unique identifier that tracked all of the searches by the same person.
Many people search for things related to themselves. For example, if you have looked for a job in the last four years, you were foolish if you didn't search for your own name to see if your friends' blogs had descriptions of your late-night drinking binges and drug use. (You are probably foolish if you used AOL search to do this, but that's a different discussion.)
CNN ran a story where they were able to track down one older lady, just because she searched for her last name, searched for "drugstores near " or somesuch, and was the only person in her area with that name. They confirmed with her that the searches were hers. (She has a dog with problems urinating on her carpet, and she has friends with lots of diseases that she "researches" for them.) They picked someone to track down who hadn't searched for anything "naughty", but that doesn't mean they couldn't have if they had wanted to.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Personally, I know that if I were told by my boss to do something and then got fired for doing it, I'd be extremely pissed!
That's when documenting your work is important. As a lead tester at Atari a few years ago, I was in situations that I could've been fired for except all my documentation pointed back to management. When a new boss told me to stop doing that, I told him I would not. Then it became a cat-and-mouse game for the next six months as he tried to get me fired without getting himself fired in the process. I eventually left on my own for "personal reasons" and it turned out I was the third person out of a dozen senior testers to leave that year when my boss became the department manager.