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Following is most of an article from the New York Times of August 9,
2006.  Elisions are indicated an ellipsis.

\subsection*{A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No.\ 4417749}

\noindent By MICHAEL BARBARO and TOM ZELLER Jr.\ (reporting also contributed by Saul Hansell)

Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and
recently released on the Internet is user No.\ 4417749.  The number
was assigned by the company to protect the searcher's anonymity, but
it was not much of a shield.

No.\ 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period
on topics ranging from ``numb fingers'' to ``60 single men'' to ``dog
that urinates on everything''.

And search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No.\
4417749 became easier to discern.  There are queries for ``landscapers
in Lilburn, Ga'', several people with the last name Arnold and ``homes
sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia''.

It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma
Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently
researches her friends.  medical ailments and loves her three dogs.
``Those are my searches'', she said, after a reporter read part of the
list to her.

AOL removed the search data from its site over the weekend and
apologized for its release, saying it was an unauthorized move by a
team that had hoped it would benefit academic researchers.

But the detailed records of searches conducted by Ms.\ Arnold and
657,000 other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online,
underscore how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves
when they use search engines --- and how risky it can be for companies
like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data.

Those risks have long pitted privacy advocates against online
marketers and other Internet companies seeking to profit from the
Internet's unique ability to track the comings and goings of users,
allowing for more focused and therefore more lucrative advertising.

But the unintended consequences of all that data being compiled,
stored and cross-linked are what Marc Rotenberg, the executive
director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy
rights group in Washington, called ``a ticking privacy time bomb''.

Mr.\ Rotenberg pointed to Google's own joust earlier this year with
the Justice Department over a subpoena for some of its search data.
The company successfully fended off the agency's demand in court, but
several other search companies, including AOL, complied.  The Justice
Department sought the information to help it defend a challenge to a
law that is meant to shield children from sexually explicit material.

``We supported Google at the time,'' Mr.\ Rotenberg said, ``but we
also said that it was a mistake for Google to be saving so much
information because it creates a risk''.

Ms.\ Arnold, who agreed to discuss her searches with a reporter, said
she was shocked to hear that AOL had saved and published three months'
worth of them.  ``My goodness, it's my whole personal life,'' she
said.  ``I had no idea somebody was looking over my shoulder''.

In the privacy of her four-bedroom home, Ms.\ Arnold searched for the
answers to scores of life’s questions, big and small.  How could she
buy “school supplies for Iraq children”?  What is the “safest place to
live”?  What is “the best season to visit Italy”?

Her searches are a catalog of intentions, curiosity, anxieties and
quotidian questions.  There was the day in May, for example, when she
typed in “termites,” then “tea for good health” then “mature living,”
all within a few hours.

Her queries mirror millions of those captured in AOL’s database, which
reveal the concerns of expectant mothers, cancer patients, college
students and music lovers.  User No.\ 2178 searches for “foods to avoid
when breast feeding.”  No.\ 3482401 seeks guidance on “calorie
counting.”  No.\ 3483689 searches for the songs “Time After Time” and
“Wind Beneath My Wings.”

\noindent\ldots

But while these searches can tell the casual observer --- or the
sociologist or the marketer --- much about the person who typed them,
they can also prove highly misleading.

At first glace [sic], it might appear that Ms.\ Arnold fears she is
suffering from a wide range of ailments.  Her search history includes
``hand tremors'', ``nicotine effects on the body'', ``dry mouth'' and
``bipolar''.  But in an interview, Ms.\ Arnold said she routinely
researched medical conditions for her friends to assuage their
anxieties.  Explaining her queries about nicotine, for example, she
said: ``I have a friend who needs to quit smoking and I want to help
her do it''.

Asked about Ms.\ Arnold, an AOL spokesman, Andrew Weinstein,
reiterated the company's position that the data release was a mistake.
``We apologize specifically to her'', he said.  ``There is not a whole
lot we can do''.

Mr.\ Weinstein said he knew of no other cases thus far where users had
been identified as a result of the search data, but he was not
surprised.  “We acknowledged that there was information that could
potentially lead to people being identified, which is why we were so
angry.”

AOL keeps a record of each user’s search queries for one month,
Mr.\ Weinstein said.  This allows users to refer back to previous
searches and is also used by AOL to improve the quality of its search
technology.  The three-month data that was released came from a special
system meant for AOL’s internal researchers that does not record the
users’ AOL screen names, he said.

Several bloggers claimed yesterday to have identified other AOL users
by examining data, while others hunted for particularly entertaining
or shocking search histories.  Some programmers made this easier by
setting up Web sites that let people search the database of searches.

John Battelle, the author of the 2005 book “The Search: How Google and
Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture,”
said AOL’s misstep, while unfortunate, could have a silver lining if
people began to understand just what was at stake.  In his book, he
says search engines are mining the priceless “database of intentions”
formed by the world’s search requests.

“It’s only by these kinds of screw-ups and unintended
behind-the-curtain views that we can push this dialogue along,”
Mr.\ Battelle said.  “As unhappy as I am to see this data on people
leaked, I’m heartened that we will have this conversation as a
culture, which is long overdue.”

Ms.\ Arnold says she loves online research, but the disclosure of her
searches has left her disillusioned.  In response, she plans to drop
her AOL subscription.  “We all have a right to privacy,” she said.
“Nobody should have found this all out.”


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