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."

With luck, this will accomplish two things:

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:

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:

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

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

Re:With luck, this will accomplish three things:

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.

Re:

Each individual user, likely tracked via cookie, has a unique number that identifies all their searches. You can't tell directly who or where they are, unless their search history gives away their identity in one way or another. Some of the data in the log

Who's AOL?

What is this AOL you speak of?

Lllama Herders

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

Any laws broken?

Since search inputs are sent over the internet as plain text, and there are often warnings generated by browsers to explain that this isn't secure, I wonder if AOL has done anything illegal and/or anything that they can be sued for in civil court? It was

Re:

"...anything linking the searches to the users was a direct result of the search terms they sent across the internet in unsecured form, by choice."

But the user had no choise in having all his searches grouped together. The data from any single search

Probably civilly actionable.

IANAL....

AOL, like most ISPs, has a privacy agreement, which states when and how your information may be distributed. Most call this 'personally identifying' information. That would probably include search terms, especially when grouped by a unique identifier, that would personally identify you.

How AOL obtained that information (plain text over the internet or otherwise) is not relevant - if they agreed with you that they would not share it, then they can't share it.

What I'm curious to see here is most of these agreements also force binding arbitration - if that is the case here, can you even have a class action lawsuit based on the privacy agreement?

And if not, are there any actual LAWS violated here? I don't see any legal culpability. If you tell me that you like to conduct sexual relations with farm animals, and I tell someone else that you told me that you like to conduct sexual relations with farm animals, that wouldn't be actionable. And that's basically what happened here, only in a large volume: People told AOL what they wanted to seach for, and AOL then passed that information to others.

Unfortunate, yes, but there isn't any inherent legal obligation for a 3rd party to hold information you give them in confidence (with certain specific exceptions, like healthcare workers, grand juries, etc, of which AOL is none).

Re:Probably civilly actionable.

searching for farm sex does not necessarily mean "you like to conduct sexual relations with farm animals." it could mean any number of things, from a poorly formulated search term, to incredulity that such practices exist. the ambiguity of the dead letter is one of the reasons to oppose the sharing of such data.

Re:

AOL, like most ISPs, has a privacy agreement, which states when and how your information may be distributed.

A great lawyer (yeah yeah oxymoron) once described how you can't post a "contract" on the front of your vehicle saying that you are not responsi

Oh...

Are there, in fact, Privacy Laws? I wasn't under the impression the US Government was particularly worked up about privacy. Certainly the EU seems to be taking a much more aggressive stance about having companies protect your data...

Besides these AOL users shouldn't get too worked up. They couldn't possibly be too concerned about what anyone thinks about them or they wouldn't be using AOL in the first place. The rest of the Internet wasn't particularly surprised at the contents of that search data -- we were all working under the assumption that everyone on AOL was searching for pictures of poo and instructions on how to murder people anyway. The data in question simply confirmed that suspicion.

Blank Check Lawsuit

It does not specify the amount of damages being sought.

The amount being sought is a blank check from Time Warner.

"We want 37 kajillion dollars."

Three?

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...

1000 free hours of AOL!

very popular search item on AOL

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

Re:

Hm. AOL must not have a very good search engine. All these searches for "cancel AOL" and none of them directed the user to anywhere in aol.com!

I'd sue too....

I'd sue too if they outed me as user of AOL.

Damn, that would be really, really embarrassing and my l33t status would be called into question.

=tkk

Good

AOL's releasing of the data was a very good thing, in that it raised people's awareness of the sheer quantity and potentially embarassing nature of search-engine records. With this data being made publically availible, people can now make informed judgements regarding the tradeoff between privacy and national security (or whatever justification is used for the retition of this data).

This sort of lawsuit had to happen at some point; better soon rather than later, and, better that it come out of the incompetance of search-engine administrators rather than the abstract fears of the privacy-inclined.

I can see the plaintiffs now...

"Yeah, see, my name is Joe Blow and I was trying to find my sister's MySpace page. Her name is Lolita. I know she used to work at a race track so I did a search for her: Lolita Blow Job Horses. What's so wrong with that? Now give me my share of the settlement."

Re:Wondering

> first off, why anyone would enter their social into google

To see if anyone out there is publishing it, so that I might send them a nasty letter?

Re:Wondering

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

Re:

In all seriousness:

x - y - z = -1635

0 y 100
0 x 773
0 z 10000

There are only so many solutions to that problem...

Re:

Actually, the first 5 digits can be determined based upon how old he is, and which state he was born in (assuming typical issuance at birth).

Wow, I didn't know that.

This is becoming a pretty scary thread. I feel a little bad for having started us down thi