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Three AOL workers leave over release of user search data

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 has fired two employees and its chief technology officer has resign Monday over the company's release of Web search data from 650,000 AOL members, according to a company e-mail and a source familiar with the matter.

The CTO, Maureen Govern, resigned effective immediately, according to an e-mail sent to employees by AOL President Jon Miller. Meanwhile, a researcher and a manager overseeing the research were fired, said a source, who requested anonymity.

AOL researchers posted the data on the user Web searches to a new AOL research Web site last month, but pulled it and apologized for the security breach shortly thereafter, but not before other sites got ahold of the data and made it searchable. AOL has been widely criticized for releasing the data.

While the members were kept anonymous, the data was so thorough and extensive that privacy advocates warned that it would be possible to trace searches back to specific searchers, which The New York Times did in one case.

A more complete story is posted here.