[Air-l] AOL and research ethics

Barry Wellman wellman at chass.utoronto.ca
Tue Aug 29 14:58:30 PDT 2006


Besides legal stuff, it's clear that AOL didn't follow what's SOP
procedures for preserving respondent, privacy in the social sciences. They
thought they were by not directly releasing user-holder's name and
accounts, but were so eager to be helpful that they didn't sanitize the
data well.
Always a concern, but one routinely dealt.
OK, I gotta stop myself or else I go on another rant about computer
scientists not knowing any social science -- in this case methods.
 Barry
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  Barry Wellman         Professor of Sociology        NetLab Director
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