AOL ‘privacy breach’ class action approved
p2pnet news view P2P:- In 2006 AOL, America Online that was, managed to leak the private and personal data of more than 650,000 users across the Net.
AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein initially said, “Although there was no personally-identifiable data linked to these accounts, we’re absolutely not defending this.”
But he later changed his tune, admitting there was, ” information that could potentially lead to people being identified”.
Two unnamed Californians and Kasadore Ramkissoon of Richmond County, New York, asked for class action status so they could go after AOL and now, “Thousands of California residents can sue AOL in their home state for invasion of privacy despite agreements they signed requiring all legal disputes to go before ‘courts of Virginia’ and be guided by Virginia law,” says the Chicago Sun-Times.
A federal appellate court cleared a path for a class-action, says the story, going on »»»
A broad protest erupted in cyberspace, with one blogger describing the incident as the “Chernobyl of the Internet,” in reference to a disastrous 1986 nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union.
The data included addresses, phone numbers, credit-card numbers, Social Security numbers, passwords and other personal information.
They revealed members’ “personal struggles with various highly personal issues, including sexuality, mental illness, recovery from alcoholism and victimization from incest, physical abuse, domestic violence, adultery and rape,” according to the class-action suit on behalf of affected members nationwide.
Hundreds of searches were by people planning to kill themselves or by others seemingly contemplating murder, according to readers of the material.
AOL’s public release of well over half-a-million search records comprised one of the Net’s worst privacy violations ever, said p2pnet, adding:
“Data have been online for about 10 days but the appalling phk-up escaped notice until this weekend.
“Details of the search histories, gathered between March to May this year, were revealed in what AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein describes as, ‘innocent-enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools’.
650,000 subscribers – AOL sued in search data scandal, September 27, 2006
Chicago Sun-Times – Lawsuit against AOL clears hurdle after ‘Chernobyl of the Internet’, January 20, 2009
p2pnet – AOL data release debacle, August 8, 2006
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