Google, AOL Search Data Represent Privacy Timebomb
Data stored by search engine companies, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN represent a ticking privacy timebomb. These companies store massive amounts of data on the personal search histories of millions of Americans, and the data may be susceptible to access by hackers and governments.
Most companies don't routinely delete the search data, and in fact, may hope to use it eventually for user profiling and marketing. In the Summer of 2006, AOL published the search histories of 650,000 users. While no names were attached to the search data itself, the contents of the searches in some cases contained very personal information.
Searches for names of specific people, addresses, telephone numbers, and social security numbers appeared. Other searches suggest criminal intent. For example, user #17556639 made the following searches: how to kill your wife, wife killer, dead people, dead pictures, murder photo.
The New York Times managed to track down several individuals based on the search queries in their histories.
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, indicated that the company's data storage practices are secure from hackers, but that he worried more about governments attempting to access the data. And in fact, the U.S. Justice Department did attempt to require Google to release data.
The privacy of personal data collected online is a growing trend, and only recently are consumers becoming increasingly aware of their vulnerabilities.
Apart from search, other privacy issues are also growing. Students have begun to organize a protest of the popular networking site, Facebook, over a recently-introduced news feed feature that allows users to see every detail of their social network, such as who is dating whom, and each item that has been changed in a user's profile.
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