A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 (2006)

This is important to look back on in the context of what's happing now with AI tools. This story is obviously about the leak of the data publicly, but what it shows is the profiling that is available to corporations.

Search has exposed so much data about ourselves to the services we use with very little regulation on what they are permitted to do with it inside their own walls.

My fear with AI is that we are moving toward sending even more data to party services. Tools such a co-pilot (which I enjoy using) are a gold mine for behavioural analysis. The profiling that will be possible with these tools is extraordinary and we don't yet fully understand the implication.

It's because of this that I'm a massive proponent of "Local AI". We need to be pushing for the industry to adopt a local inference architecture asap. It needs to become the standard pattern as early as possible to reduce the risk of the AI revolution being a repeat of the invasive internet search and advertising industry.

That episode (releasing the AOL search query log file for research purposes and subsequent aftermath) led to some firings at the company, but some information retrieval searchers used this log to conduct important experiments.

The "60s lady with the dog that kept peeing her sofa" got her hour of fame, and the whole thing became a case study in de-anonymization.

A few pointers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233390862_Privacy_P...

https://github.com/wasiahmad/aol_query_log_analysis

https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/08/15/100592/who-benef...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00200...

https://isquared.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/mining-search-logs...

There was also a theatre production produced around AOL User 927: https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/05/uare-what-u-se...

And a documentary series about User 711391: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1455044/

Re-identification of supposedly anonymous data was a problem twenty years ago, and is a bigger problem today. Soon it may become a crisis, as the tools needed to do it become more and more turnkey, effective, and commodified. Now we dox as in a glass, darkly, etc.

Maybe some day we'll have a PIR-based[1] search engine-- but then you couldn't harvest data on your users and sell personalized ads, so maybe not.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_information_retrieval

My data is in this list someone used for "research". They evidently correlated with Sony Everquest Chats, LinkedIn, Twitter, AOL, corporate email, Meta, Amazon Purchases, Natural Language Processing Data collections, some DFIR (digital forensics) data collection, HR records and so much more. I would say at the time they collected the info I was planning renaissance fest attire, studying security topics and frantically figuring out identities of some gamers who dogpiled on me as a few made genuine threats towards my life and livelihood.

I'd say yes, throw disinformation at at, as once I started noticing someone was really doing that level of tracking I did throw disinfo at it... a lot. The problem was with their interpretations from there of searches intentionally made to mess them up - as I neither had consent yet realized I was being stalked.

That went on and on and on - until people died - my father thought I was swatting him (I had a welfare check made - not a swat - as they were disclosing his financial advisor and info - he's white and safe presumably) . Yet yes, people did die. It is evident no one understands it is never just them in research or in a channel for conversations. The result of the whole thing was my childhood best friend also being left homeless and run over (by someone opportunistic in the whole process). My brother de-housed by a gang member a party kept sending about (one actually poisoned my dog). My father alienated. My sister used as a puppet for extortion instead of being rehabbed.

It's very very very ugly the string of deaths and alienation that came from what they thought was funny research into AI.

This old data needs to be located and disposed of or put into proper custodianship. It's grown teeth that cost lives. Throwing misinfo at it is just crapping up the Internet more to push to web 3.0, where the same problem will thrive. Requires legislation. Not quite relaxed enough to articulate how and what right now due to the extensive harassment that came about from it all. Maybe some day. It's been pretty terrorizing.

There's one thing could work, but which would be very hard or impossible to implement: management personal responsibility for private data loss/exposure.

2006... If they only knew....