Omega Point

NY Times on AOL search log leak

The New York Times describes how they iden­ti­fied a woman from Lil­burn, Geor­gia based on her sort-of/maybe/accidentally leaked-on-purpose-but-it’s-for-researchers– and-also-those-responsible-have-been-sacked AOL search data. They imply that this was due to clever leg­work and don’t actu­ally say that she typed in her Social Secu­rity num­ber, but there are cer­tainly plenty of exam­ples of searchers who did.

And finally, because you’re appar­ently sup­posed to do so in news arti­cles and blog posts about this leak, here are some enter­tain­ing searches to amuse your­selves with while con­demn­ing AOL for hav­ing invaded these people’s privacy:

Between 9:15 and 9:40 AM, user 12276808 searches for:

• ejac­u­la­tor
• ejac­u­la­tor vacuum
• milk machine
• milk­ing devices
• cow milk­ing devices

User 2643851 searches for:

• hotmail.com
• car parts
• effect of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mony on wrong­ful convictions
• the eye­wit­ness lab­o­ra­tory depart­ment of psy­col­ogy uni­ver­sity of texas at el paso
• the amer­i­can psy­chol­ogy association
• sexy girls
• google

And finally, the smug, leaked-data-referencing clos­ing stat­ment: That last search may have been a bet­ter option.