Are You a Pornhound or Manhunter? The Data Valdez That Was The AOL Leak.
by Tony Hung on August 15, 2006
Slate has a great article by the folks over at Splunk, who have mined AOL’s data leak — all 35 million users.
From Pornhound to Manhunter, to the Basketcase and Newbie, they’ve broken down how people “surf” into seven discrete categories.
Regardless, some of the data has revealed some … well, revealing, patterns of search.
To wit:
The searches of AOL user No. 672368, for example, morphed over several weeks from “you’re pregnant he doesn’t want the baby” to “foods to eat when pregnant” to “abortion clinics charlotte nc” to “can christians be forgiven for abortion.”
In other AOL Leak related news:
- Want to mine that leak yourself? One enterprising entrepreneur has already set up a script that will allow you to do so.
- Some people say, however, that that particular website doesn’t completely work…
- Some of the top 100 “How to” searches: Number 1? How to tie a tie. Number 6? How to get Pregnant. Ironically, this comes right before Number 7 — How to Masturbate.
- Filed under “Scary, scary sh*t”: Someone’s thinking of bumping off their wife, but that ain’t all the disturbing stuff that has been dug up.
- Funniest term for AOL Leak goes to Jason “I’m still seething” Calacanis: “The data Valdez“.
- In the Department of Silver Linings, at least the government now realizes that privacy is good, and it gets the public thinking about privacy issues.
- Lastly, Amit Agarwal talks about how you can prevent your search data from being leaked if you use Google — but quite frankly, the same principles apply to any search tool. Hiding your IP seems like a smart idea.
One comment
[...] For a privacy disaster that makes the AOL Data Valdez scandal a few months ago look like a piss in the pond, I hope three examples in as many weeks is enough “proof” that Digg needs to button down on its front page news. [...]
by Deep Jive Interests » UPDATE: An Unmoderated Digg Leads To Privacy Disaster on November 22, 2006 at 3:56 pm. #