I'm furious about the fact that someone released this user data, regardless of their intentions (which were good: to share data with the research communities). This was a huge mistake, and people have to really think before they get all excited about sharing data or APIs. I'm all for being open, but user privacy trumps all the open ideals that we all share.
Frankly, I want us to NOT KEEP LOGS of our search data. Yep, you heard that right... we shouldn't even keep this data. I know that's crazy, but I learned this week that Wikipedia turned off their log files. They did this for tech reasons, but they now are keeping them off and not looking to solve the problem because of the huge upside of users knowing their searches on wikipedia DON'T EVEN EXIST!
I think we should use this as a way to brand AOL Search: We don't record your searches!
What do you folks think, should we turn off our log files and go for it?
You can read more about our response at CNET.
We screwed up--so lets talk about a real solution to search privacy,
Reader Comments
(Page 2 of 2)22. "the call"? what about "the continuing to bill a dead guy for nine months even after someone had been begging aol to stop billing the dead guy for nine months" story?
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/columnists.nsf/techtalk/story/A0F7FD49EFA6565A862571BF006C005A?OpenDocument
23. Jason,
This is a very complex issue and deserves a real debate.
As a marketing researcher, I believe that this search data has an incredible value and that it would be sad to get rid of it. I believe that using real and pure behavioral data (vs. data collected in surveys) will help researchers get much richer consumer insights than ever. We should all aim at a smarter marketing, with starts with smarter measurements and metrics. Smarter marketing means relevance, which in the end benefits publishers, advertisers and users.
Keeping the data for yourself or destroying it is not the answer. I have two suggestions:
- let the user own, manage and control this metadata of online activity behavior. I love the principles of http://www.AttentionTrust.org and think this is the right direction
- instead of opening the information publicly to everyone, select a few third parties who have access to the data if they respect certain rules and give some guarantees (to be defined).
Posted at 9:57PM on Aug 7th 2006 by Insights 2.0
24. A real solution to search privacy would be AttentionTrust.
So what if AOL discards my clickstream? They certainly aren't going to give up on recording my personal information to customize ads - in the long term. And the majority of people don't use AOL search anyways.
But, if AOL took a stand and adopted the principles of AttentionTrust (property, mobility, economy and transparency), that would be the kind of thing a leader would do. AOL has enough weight in the online world, where it could force the rest of the industry to respect our rights.
Posted at 6:48AM on Aug 8th 2006 by peter caputa
25. AOL Search: We don't record your searches!
Great idea!
There should be some kind of aggregate log kept for traffic and technical support purposes, but nothing on the order of what they released. Perhaps a 30-60 timeout on the logs?
I don't think that there is any reason for maintaining logs of such a detailed nature as what currently exists.
I use google's search engine, though I'm wary of even their policies (which seem to be the best among major search engines at the moment).
Posted at 11:37AM on Aug 8th 2006 by Francis Esmonde-White
26. The problem AOL faces now is the fact that it can no longer be forgiven for anything they do. Take the case of an ex felon - once he is released for past crimes the public and the police 'hawkeye' him to see if he does anything wrong. The naysayers and pundits are doing that with AOL. True AOL has some good ideas and some good things going but if someone there can't get it through their neanderthal head that when you are against the ropes you have to be careful and even more watchful of what you do. You have to be very disciplined as a company and strive for absolute perfection in all things to minimize any more 'incidents' that will obliterate an already fractured consumer confidence in AOL. The 'call' was more than just one bad apple in the batch. AOL had turned a blind eye to retention practices even after they were repeatedly fined in order to continue to do whatever it took to retain members. In reality they had bushel after bushel of rotting apples all in various degrees of decay. Not just one bad apple in a batch of angels. My hope is that they will sanitize and clean up their act. It is one thing to 'talk' about it - it is another thing to actually do it and then show the public they are doing it. My dad used to tell me that it takes a million good things to get people to forget about the 1 bad thing.
Posted at 1:12PM on Aug 8th 2006 by John
27. I agree with you man... AOL aren't really seen as the most trust-worthy of companies, not pulling off tricks like this would be a start to mending their reputation.
It's quite strange really, in the UK there are two adverts being run by AOL, one of them talks about all the good things about the Web (freedom of speech, communication etc) and another talks about bad things (big brother-esque society, invasion of privacy)... It's backed up with a URL to discuss such matters at www.aol.com/discuss/
If AOL are trying to get people talking about some of the bad things about the web I think they should be expecting a lot of conversation about this episode.
On a side note, I think privacy policies should be written in clear language and should have the customer's best interest in mind. They need simplifying too. If something is written in legalese it looks like the company has something to hide. Just a thought.
Oh and by the way, I think that anyone who has commented here to personally attack Jason is being a dick. Let's just have a conversation without it getting personal, yeah?
28. I dont know why people arent waking up and using search proxies. Its so simple, its low tech its free and it leaves the engines out in the cold for collecting personal info and passing it along.
Oh and its free. http://www.blackboxsearch.com
Posted at 2:56PM on Aug 9th 2006 by tal
29. "Congratulating AOL for "the right response" is like congratulating FEMA for promising to do better on the next hurricane."
You know, on the surface, it almost seems as though you actually thought about that for a minute.
FEMA has no accountability. AOL could go out of business and is accountable to its shareholders and customers. FEMA doesn't have customers, it just creates new classes of victims. What happened at FEMA is the result of long-term systemic corruption, "not-my-job", bureaucracy, and incompetence. What happened with the search data at AOL was from a lack of attention to detail for one instance ("The Call," however, is another matter, since the manual has been leaked). It would be very, very easy for AOL to not repeat the mistake. It will be nearly impossible for FEMA to improve its response to disasters. It will have the same problems over and over. Nice try, but no comparison.
Posted at 11:50AM on Aug 10th 2006 by Michael Martine
30. AOL screwed up bigtime. That's the simple truth about it.
I think this infringes on our rights of privacy as American citizens, and is identity theft waiting to happen. Who's to say the people at the research communities don't have ways of finding personal info by matching names with user accounts? And on that topic, there are crooked people in organizations that WAIT for things like this to happen. This is totally idiotic, and AOL is to blame for it.
Posted at 1:21AM on Aug 11th 2006 by Homura
31. Don't shut off the logs, because those are important to business. Everyone else has them, and just because one institution shuts them off for one reason or another doesn't mean it's a great idea for everyone.
An opt-in program sounds great, but so does simply beefing up security. I haven't kept my entire thumb on the rest of the parties in the search industry, but I don't remember hearing Google, MSN or Yahoo! goofing up like this, i.e. - they found a way to securely keep search logs.
Instead of what could be considered a knee-jerk reaction (instead of a solution) to a fiasco, why not learn from the ways other companies manage in these scenarios and implement a solution that works for everyone?
Posted at 3:24PM on Aug 11th 2006 by David Chartier
33. I was wondering if one of you computer savy people can help me. I am being victimized by a guy who keeps digging up my searches and and threatening me. Is there anthything I can do about it.He hacks into my files and creates weird files etc. Can I contact the authorities.
Posted at 1:18PM on May 1st 2008 by CARL
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21. @ John: "If you minimize mistakes you won't have to worry so much on fixing mistakes."
So true.
@ Emma: "You don't belong in corporate. You don't think before you blurt out stupid shit."
He doesn't belong in corporate because he's trying a transperant approach to doing business?
Posted at 7:17PM on Aug 7th 2006 by Blake Snow