Ethics Newsline®

NEW YORK
An attempt to support academic research into Web searching went very, very wrong last week as America Online posted search topics of hundreds of thousands of users — only to find that bloggers, reporters, and armchair Internet detectives were able to trace back the searches and identify some individuals.

AOL immediately apologized and vowed to be more careful, but as USA Today reported, the incident has raised ethical questions about the use of such data, in particular whether search companies should store such requests. While firms such as AOL and Google argue that storing requests allows users to recall previous searches and helps search engines to improve their products, USA Today noted that the incident demonstrates that privacy safeguards are lacking.

New York Times technology reporter Tom Zeller, Jr., observed that the incident could be the Exxon Valdez of the information industries — analogous to the 1989 oil spill that that “became the rallying cry for the environmental movement.”

Zeller noted that search data is a “hot commodity” in the Internet marketplace because it tells a great deal about consumer interests and preferences, but that “as it stands now, little with regard to search queries is private. No laws clearly place search requests off-limits to advertisers, law enforcement agencies or academic researchers, beyond the terms that companies set themselves.”

CNET News reported that the accidental release of the data may strengthen the hand of legislators who want to clamp down on the type and amount of information Internet companies can collect. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) cited the incident in his call for expansive regulation that would require all website operators to regularly scrub personal information from their databanks.

According to a report from the Christian Science Monitor, AOL could face lawsuits from users who contend that their privacy was violated by the release of the data. The Monitor quoted analyst Paul Saffo, who advised that companies think twice about enriching themselves on consumer data.

“You may discover that private information is the new dioxin or the new asbestos,” he told the Monitor. “This is a vast liability.”