The Electronic Frontier Foundation ( EFF ) is asking the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) to force AOL to help the hoi polloi whose lookup records it recently released .
In a ill filed Monday , the EFF request that the FTC investigate the incident and have AOL notify , via electronic and postal mail , all affect persons that their lookup solvent were free .
AOL should also pay for at least one class of credit monitoring service for each somebody , because the release of the platter put these citizenry at risk for identity theft , the EFF explosive charge . The EFF is a nonprofit establishment focused on protecting civil impropriety in engineering context , such as computing and the net .
An AOL spokesman said the fellowship , a Time Warner subsidiary , has no comment about the EFF complaint , but add that AOL ca n’t identify the accounts involved . “ There is no way to unscramble the identifier code back into the account statement names , ” he say .
The FTC should also force AOL to refrain from collecting and storing logs of its users ’ lookup action , except when it has to retain these logs in fiat to decent render a service . Even then , AOL should never salt away these access personally identifiable physical body for more than 14 sidereal day , the EFF said .
The complaint arises from the revelation last week that AOL had made available on its AOL Research Web site about 20 million search criminal record from about 658,000 of its member , covering the three - month full point between March and May .
Although AOL did n’t disclose the names of the members , it did grouping each person ’s criminal record with a unequaled number , hold it possible to see what each individual search for . The information included search queries , as well as Web website the members clicked on to .
AOL acknowledged the liberation had been a reversion in judgement and removed the information file cabinet from its Web land site , but the records are now available on many Web sites . Bloggers and journalists have had a subject field day analyzing the query , which contain all sorting of sensitive information , from credit card , phone and Social Security number , to birth engagement , full names and addresses .
Some queries show exploiter sought child pornography , selective information about commiting suicide and murder and steering about dealing with sexual vilification . The New York Times even managed to track down one of the dissemble members and , with her permission , interviewed and identify her .
With this faux pas , AOL engaged in deceptive and unjust trade exercise that violate FTC rules , and as such the FTC should look into the matter and take activity , accord to the EFF .
In its ill , the EFF also asks that AOL be order to obtain a biannual assessment and report from an main professional about its privacy protection policies and methods .
