CTO Resigns And 2 Fired In AOL Search Data Fallout

The fallout over the AOL search data leak continues. The CTO of AOL, Maureen McGovern will leave AOL immediately. Two other employees, the researcher and his supervisor have been fired. McGovern oversaw the division that released the user search data. The actions were announced in two e-mails from Jon Miller the chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL.

The amount of data released by AOL is staggering but it is the idea that it has been anonymized is the problem. Dataminers detect patterns in piles of data that appears to be just a chaotic collection. And naturally some people have been identified from their search patterns.

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Written by John McCormac on August 22nd, 2006 with 2 comments.
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Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Cornflakes
#1. August 22nd, 2006, at 10:47 AM.

Dismissing the employess directly related is one thing, but can the CTO be held responsible for actions she may have known nothing about?

I must say, though, some of these search queries are hilarious - “how to tell the wife about affair”

http://www.frogspy.com/searches/byquery/tell+the+wife+about+affair

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John McCormac
#2. August 22nd, 2006, at 11:03 AM.

Well she was in charge of the division where the leak occurred and she was at the head of the chain of command. Losing a CTO was probably a sacrifice that the management of AOL was happy with. And it looked good to the media.

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