AOL Subscribers Sue Over Release Of Search Data

An anonymous reader points out an AP story indicating that AOL hasn't seen the end of its own public embarrassment after airing some dirty laundry on behalf of its customers. Excerpted from the story: "Three AOL subscribers who suddenly found records of their Internet searches widely distributed online are suing the company under privacy laws and are seeking an end to its retention of search-related data ... The lawsuit is believed to be the first in the wake of AOL's intentional release of some 19 million search requests made over a three-month period by more than 650,000 subscribers. ... Filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., the lawsuit seeks class-action status. It does not specify the amount of damages being sought."

Comments

With luck, this will accomplish two things:

[cunina]

1) Scaring other ISPs and related companies into better privacy safeguards

2) Hastening the timely demise of AOL

Re:With luck, this will accomplish two things:

[tymbow]

Even if they do win, it wont make any difference to data retention practices though. No one would ever rule against that because of potential use as evidence; especially with the push to mandated retention policies.

Re:With luck, this will accomplish two things:

[Richard W.M. Jones]

1) Scaring other ISPs and related companies into better privacy safeguards $80

2) Hastening the timely demise of AOL ... Priceless

Three?

[Who235]

Three AOL subscribers. . .

They must have been the only 3 AOLers who met both of these conditions:

a) They weren't searching for "hot kiddie lolita horse love" and were consequently unafraid of that search rearing its ugly head in open court.

b) They were aware enough of the wider internet to know their data had been released in the first place and the implications thereof.

Three? Yeah, that sounds about right.

I can see the settlement now...

[zen611]

1000 free hours of AOL!

very popular search item on AOL

[postmortem]

http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com/search.php?page=1 &textfield=&textfield2=cancel%20aol

Re:Wondering

[pluther]

Hm. Now that you mentioned it, it got me curious so I tried it.
I entered my SSN into Google.
It replied with "-1635"

Lllama Herders

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the company that makes Winamp. They used to be in the free backup diskette business.

Re:With luck, this will accomplish three things:

[pimpimpim]

3) making people aware of what their ISP / anyone with (or even without) a search warrant, can find out about them by just combining their non-anonymous search history.