AOL, You've Been a Bad Boy

AOL has been very bad lately. Evidently, they released a bunch of data on their users search results to the public. I don't know exactly if this was in a study or whatever, but one way or another it doesn't appear to be something they meant to do, or at least meant to disclose it to as many people as ended up seeing it.

Thus, AOL pulled the information. Unfortunately that was done a bit too late and the data had already been mirrored on other places around the web. CNET.COM found one such website, or whatever, and started to look at the information. Here is a snippet of one section of the article:

"It's possible to guess that AOL user 710794 is an overweight golfer, owner of a 1986 Porsche 944 and 1998 Cadillac SLS, and a fan of the University of Tennessee Volunteers Men's Basketball team. User 710794 is interested in the Cherokee County School District in Canton, Ga., and has looked up the Suwanee Sports Academy in Suwanee, Ga., which caters to local youth, and the Youth Basketball of America's Georgia affiliate. That's pretty normal.

What's not is that user 710794 also regularly searched for 'lolitas,' a term commonly used to describe photographs and videos of minors who are nude or engaged in sexual acts. "

This is someone who lives near me in my county in GA and probably works at one of the public schools in the area. That's some scary stuff. However, most of the data the CNET article talks about is more of the harmless and bizarre commodity. You should really check the article out which can be read here.

If anything, it lets you take a glimpse into just what sort of stuff people are looking at on the Web, and how many pissed off women there are out there.

-Steve