{"id":1310,"date":"2006-08-09T11:57:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-09T06:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2006-08-09T11:57:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-09T06:57:00","slug":"privacy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=1310","title":{"rendered":"Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/08\/09\/technology\/09aol.html?_r=1&#038;oref=slogin\">AOL Searchers identity revealed<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more excerpts--><em>Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher\u2019s anonymity, but it was not much of a shield.<\/p>\n<p>No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from \u201cnumb fingers\u201d to \u201c60 single men\u201d to \u201cdog that urinates on everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No. 4417749 became easier to discern. There are queries for \u201clandscapers in Lilburn, Ga,\u201d several people with the last name Arnold and \u201chomes sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends\u2019 medical ailments and loves her three dogs. \u201cThose are my searches,\u201d she said, after a reporter read part of the list to her.<\/p>\n<p>AOL removed the search data from its site over the weekend and apologized for its release, saying it was an unauthorized move by a team that had hoped it would benefit academic researchers.<\/p>\n<p>But the detailed records of searches conducted by Ms. Arnold and 657,000 other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online, underscore how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves when they use search engines \u2014 and how risky it can be for companies like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m guessing that this is all okay because the only people who should be concerned for their privacy are the terrorists, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AOL Searchers identity revealed<\/p>\n<p> <span style=\"color:#777\"> . . . &rarr; Read More: <a href=\"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=1310\">Privacy<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}