[Air-l] AOL and research ethics

[Alex Halavais]

> Subject: Re: [Air-l] AOL and research ethics
>
> I'm wondering what kind of sanitization method(s) would have worked in
> this case?

Actually, I think the major issue here was having the search histories
linked. Not coincidentally, this is what made the data set most
interesting. Other engines have released single searches available to
researchers, or to the world. For some time Altavista provided lists
of most recent searches on a web page, and other engines did the same.
Google has a tickerboard with running searches at their headquarters,
I've heard, and they've also released raw search data to researchers,
with no user identification at all.

Of course, that data could potentially be revealing as well: if, for
example, someone searches for a name and social security number in the
same query. But the likelihood of intrusion increases with each new
dimension you add to the data. Particularly because the internal links
to search histories were made (and these could then connect to
external sources of information), this was a fairly intrusive set of
data.

Best,

Alex


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