AOL Search Scandal – Has It Really Gone Away?

PLEASE NOTE:  Some of the content of this article is appropriate for adults only.

With news of AOL sealing a billion pound deal in selling many patents that it has, we investigate whether the AOL search scandal of 2006 has really gone away.  The AOL search scandal is widely believed to be one of the major controversies of AOLs history and one that is ultimately sealing the fate of the company.

For research reasons, in 2006, AOL decided to release search data which covered a number of months in 2006 from around 650,000 of its users.  Seems harmless, right?  That is until you consider that although the search data is anonymous (each user is identified by a number), some of the search terms contain personally identifiable information.  And, although including a unique number for each user might have seemed innocent at the time, it has actually helped keen up and coming cyber detectives to track down some of these users.

Although AOL took the information down after only 3 days, 6 years later it is still available on the Internet.  After its release on 4th August 2006, the data was almost immediately mirrored in numerous locations, and still remains online today.

AOLStalker is a prominent mirror of this information which allows you to search the records and examine what each user was searching for.   Some of the search logs are your standard, run of the mill, not really interesting at all logs.  However, some are hilarious and some are quite frankly disturbing.

Lets for example investigate user number 317966.  He could be an ok chap couldn’t he?

User Number 317966

31st March 2006 – searching for damporn.com – not really sure what that is or used to be but I think we can safely assume it is something of the x-rated variety! ;).

Although of course it may be tempting to investigate that website – we were of course put off when the search terms after that were ‘spyware’ and ‘check my computer’ about an hour later (don’t ask us what he was doing for an hour!!).

OK, so so far, he isn’t that weird.  Just likes porn and then likes cleaning all the spyware he collected from the questionable x-rated websites he had been visiting.  Yeah, fairly standard bloke so far.  Lets move on.

So he searches for free things, eBay and some galleries of ‘Kristan’….. still very normal.

Lets wind back a couple of weeks, oh and what do we have…. “mother in law helped me jerk my cock”.  Oh for the love of God!  I really hope she didn’t.  This starts to get a little weird now.

It can’t get any worse, it just can’t possibly…… oh my lord… “my mother in law gave me a birthday blow job”.  I’m hoping your wife doesn’t know all these things that your mother in law is doing to you.

OK, so we’ve got a guy who was fairly normal(ish) with a strange attraction and sexual relationship with his mother in law.  Very very disturbing…. surly it can’t get any worse….

“Son in law grabbed my tits”.  Man, this dude has breasts now?  I’m confused whether we’re dealing with a lesbian mother in law loving woman or a gay son in law loving man”.  In fact I’m just confused now.  But we’ll move on anyway…..

“My mom grabbed my husbands cock”.  Hail Mary, hail Mary, hail Mary – what is happening to this family?  It seems like one big incest fest in user 317966’s family.

And just when you are thinking that 317966 is a woman…. “my mother in law likes to peek at my cock”.

By this stage, I am thinking that user 317966 really needs to be talking about these kind of things with a doctor, therapist and quite possibly the Police as well.

Oh, and then the daughter in law and sister in laws aren’t safe either.  This dude really is scary now with the fact that he will only have sex with members of his family!

A few days later we were on to the son in law….. and you get the picture.

By the end of the March-May 2006 period this guy had basically explored sexual related searches to every possible in law one could possibly have.

Some of the results returned for User 317966

In conclusion….

And if you thought this was scary, then you should see some of the others.  User 317966 was fairly tame compared to some of the others.

In 2006, this whole saga got AOL in a lot of hot water, especially after users started getting identified.  I mean, those search terms that you make while you are anonymous, would you really want to be linked with them at a future date?  Now you can see why there were many angry people with lawsuits against the company.

So, we have just touched the tip of the iceberg here.  There’s much more data out there and data mining from other sources is becoming more popular from websites like social networks Facebook and Twitter.

In an age where technology is continuing to increase and processing power and tools become more effective, expect more data mining and potentially, more things coming back to haunt you.

This comes back to our number one golden rule – if you need an absolute cast iron guarantee that what you type won’t appear in a students data mining experiment or on a tell-all or leaks website, then don’t type it in the first place ;).

People in recent years have fallen foul of sharing secrets online, with numerous articles detailing people who have said things on Facebook which have come back to haunt them – mainly employees bragging about sick days when they’re not sick and then getting sacked!!

If there is enough interest, we will continue to analyse the AOL search data and see if there are any more interesting stories or patterns that we can pick out for you.

Please feel free to comment below – and if you are one of the users identified by the search data, you can always own up if you like!! ;).