I read this first in the WSJ this morning. I can't get the article online, so basically:

AOL mistakenly released the search query records of over 650,000 (I think) users. The records do not contain "personally identifyable information" but are associated with a user number; additionally, the search queries themselves sometimes lend personal information about the users. This was apparently done in an effort to reach out to the research / scientific community by a division or a group at AOL; when it was discovered that the site they released it on was open to the public and that a bunch of people were going there, accessing the data, and saving it or posting it elsewhere, they quickly shut it down. Talks of violations of privacy policy and maybe even federal law are going around.

Here's a ytmnd and a blog post on it.

Anyone still use AOL?

Nope.

People still use that crap?

Oh god, a few of the searches in that ytmnd made me cringe (or laugh)

Perhaps this shall be AOL's demise?

That other thread is about the same thing (the 2 gig of logs bit). :p

You know, there's been a whole lot of talk about AOL recently..

They released and announced it. Then people got pissed. Then they called it a mistake. But they did it intentionally.

I suggest we put all further comments on the other thread, since it has more posts already.

Which is sad, because this thread was posted one whole minute earlier.

How time flies on the intarwebs.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]That other thread is about the same thing (the 2 gig of logs bit). :p[/QUOTE]
but I posted it a minute earlier :p

merge, please?