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AOL to hire first privacy officer in wake of data exposure scandal

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
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Elinor Mills

AOL will hire its first chief privacy officer. This comes a month after it announced that two of its employees were fired and the chief technology officer resigned over the release of Web search data from more than 600,000 AOL members.

The release of the data, for scientific purposes, prompted widespread criticism from privacy advocates and Congress and .

AOL announced that it would hire a chief privacy officer, but didn't say when or who, in a company-wide memo from Chief Executive Jonathan Miller, according to an Associated Press article published on SiliconValley.com on Friday.

The memo also outlined a reorganization in which the Time Warner subsidiary will disband its business unit that handles Internet access subscriptions.