AOL Apologizes for Releasing User Data

From News.com, AOL is apologizing for releasing the user search data that was released yesterday.

The randomly selected data, which focused on 658,000 subscribers and posted 10 days ago, was among the tools intended for use on the recently launched AOL Research site, according to reports on various blog sites. But the Internet giant has since removed the search logs from public view.

“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, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant,” AOL, a unit of Time Warner, said in a statement. “Although there was no personally-identifiable data linked to these accounts, we’re absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize. We’ve launched an internal investigation into what happened, and we are taking steps to ensure that this type of thing never happens again.”

Little too late now, but they mean well, right?

Added: Jason Calacanis just posted his response to the release of the user search data, here. His solution, to not even save it to start with. Great idea, but I somehow get the feeling the people in charge of AOL are more worried about making money from such data than they are about it getting out in the “wild”.

Also, Andrew Weinstein has been posting comments on blogs, like TechCrunch, apologizing for this, as referenced in this post by Michael Arrington.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels August 2006

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