AOL has apparently released details of Internet searches performed over a period of three months by hundreds of thousands of its subscribers, raising privacy concerns.The data, apparently made available for research purposes, is no longer available at the website http://research.aol.com, but details of the data were cited by technology blog site Techcrunch, and the page linking to it was cached by Google’s search engine.The cached copy of the page said the data comprised about 19 million Web searches performed by 658,000 users from March through May. The page warned of sexually explicit language in some of the queries, and said of the data, “This collection is distributed for noncommercial research use only.” The page contained a link to a compressed copy of the data archive.The page asked researchers using the data to cite a research paper titled “A Picture of Search” based on the data, which names two AOL employees as co-authors. That paper is still available for download here. AOL officials in London are aware of the issue, they said Monday morning. They had no further comment, and referred queries to the company’s U.S. headquarters.The release of such information poses serious privacy concerns. Major search engine companies fought a request for similar data on user searches last year by the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. government wanted to use the data to check the effectiveness of a federal law aimed at minors’ access to harmful material. In January it filed a motion with the court to compel Google to comply with its subpoena and turn over a “random sample” of 1 million website addresses found in its search engine index. It also asked the company the text of all queries filed on the search engine during a specific week. AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft’s MSN were also subpoenaed, and complied to varying degrees.By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service (London Bureau)Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe