AOL has apologized for posting 20 million keyword searches by more than 650,000 of its users on a research website violating company rules on privacy, leading US newspapers reported Tuesday.
Although the searches were identified by a anonymous user-ID numbers — making identification difficult, the company said it had pulled the information it had collected from March to May off the website after bloggers became aware of it over the weekend.
It issued an apology for its unauthorized use of the search data and said it had launched an internal investigation to prevent further such mishaps and determine if disciplinary action is warranted.
"This was a screw-up and we're angry and upset about it," said AOL's statement quoted by The Washington Post.
"Although there was no personally-identifiable data linked to these accounts, we're absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize."
The search data was published in July on a new AOL website designed to help search-technology reserchers.
While one expert estimated that out of the 20 million searches, only a few hundred contained sensitive information such as credit card and Social Security numbers, others noted that all data passed on was a violation of privacy.
"Search data can reveal very personal information, including political and religious beliefs, medical conditions and financial information," Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online-privacy advocacy group, told The Wall Street Journal.
"It's a serious disregard for user privacy, particularly considering the uproar over the (Justice Department's) demand for this kind of information from Google earlier this year."
AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft complied with the government's request for Internet search data to support a law shielding minors from sexually explicit material, but Google opposed it in court and won in March.
