By Becky Hogge
So AOL revealed the personal search histories of 650,000 Americans on the weekend. The anonymised data wasn't quite anonymous enough. Although individual IP addresses were obscured, the personal stories behind the unique three-month histories were plain for all to see. What's most striking is how starkly hobbies, like motoring, cooking and poker, sit beside disturbingly personal concerns - plastic surgery, adoption, suicide and how to kill your wife.
AOL realised their mistake and removed the files, issuing an apology for what they called an unqualified "screw-up" in thinking. Too late. The files are now mirrored all over the web (would-be voyeurs are invited to find them without the help of this blogger).
Andrew Brown saw this coming back in January, when he reported on Google's unwillingness to hand over records to the US government in their investigation into child protection from online pornography. It looks like they were right to hold back. Read Brown's prescient piece 'What does Google know about you?' here.
