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An article in today’s New York Times will make you think about your recent online surfing. The article, A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749, reports AOL’s disclosure of internet searches made by one user during a three month period. AOL’s “research” assigned the user a number to protect their identity. Yet, the searches themselves formed a kind of trail of bread crumbs right back to a 62 year old widow living in Georgia. The problem is that the searches themselves betray so much information about the user that it raises questions of online privacy violations.

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 — and how risky it can be for companies like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data.

Those risks have long pitted privacy advocates against online marketers and other Internet companies seeking to profit from the Internet’s unique ability to track the comings and goings of users, allowing for more focused and therefore more lucrative advertising.

But the unintended consequences of all that data being compiled, stored and cross-linked are what Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group in Washington, called “a ticking privacy time bomb.”

Mr. Rotenberg pointed to Google’s own joust earlier this year with the Justice Department over a subpoena for some of its search data. The company successfully fended off the agency’s demand in court, but several other search companies, including AOL, complied. The Justice Department sought the information to help it defend a challenge to a law that is meant to shield children from sexually explicit material.

“We supported Google at the time,” Mr. Rotenberg said, “but we also said that it was a mistake for Google to be saving so much information because it creates a risk.”

The stockpiling of information is dangerous as every institution is maintaining a database on each individual - and increasingly, the information may be accessed online. My errand list could include the bank, the pharmacy, lunch, and planning a weekend away - all done with the ease of my laptop. Online browsers are the nexis of this information. So, what’s the alternative?

Ms. Arnold says she loves online research, but the disclosure of her searches has left her disillusioned. In response, she plans to drop her AOL subscription. “We all have a right to privacy,” she said. “Nobody should have found this all out.”

Good luck with cancelling the AOL subscription. Maybe Ms. Arnold should check out Insignificant Thoughts, Vincent Ferrari’s blog that gained so much fame by his posting of his experience trying to cancel his AOL account. If Google sticks to its guns with online privacy, they could very quickly increase their user base. Any other companies?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 10:21 pm and is filed under NY Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.