AOL chief technology officer resigns over search data release

Our Corporate Bureau
23 August 2006

Mumbai: Maureen Govern, AOL's chief technology officer has resigned from the company owning responsibility for accidentally releasing search data for 658,000 anonymous users.

AOL, the online division of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc, had apologised on August 7 for releasing information about 20 million keyword searches from about 658,000 anonymous users onto the Web over a three-month period. Disclosing the data was against company policy, AOL said at that time.

A researcher in the technology research department of AOL and an employee's supervisor have also left the company in the wake of the disclosure scam, reports quoting industry sources said.

Privacy watchdogs object to collection and sharing of user data and constantly monitor operations of internet service providers. In fact, Google Inc, the world's largest search engine, has gained popularity for its refusal to share data with US government agencies. AOL currently stores search data that can identify users for 30 days while anonymous search data is stored indefinitely.

Privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have demanded investigation into AOL's privacy practices, arguing that the Internet provider did not need to store such search data.

AOL, meanwhile, said it plans to create a task force to review its customer information privacy policy. AOL said its task force will review other measures to protect users, including ways to prevent the storage of any sensitive data in the research database that include 16 digits, like those of many credit cards.