AOL Admits Security 'screw-up'

America On Line (AOL) admitted to "a screw-up" yesterday which resulted in 20m search inquiries by more than half a million subscribers going public.

The company said none of the data was personally identifiable. "We're angry and upset about it," it said, explaining that the website on which the information was published was used for research and had been shut down at the weekend when the security implications were realised.

But there were fears that identities could be discovered from the searches, and some bloggers were said to have copied the information before it was taken down. Searches recorded were said to include "how to kill your wife" and "ways of committing suicide".

"It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been it would have been stopped in an instant," the AOL statement said.

Search data released came from 658,000 "anonymised users" between March and May. There was no personally identifiable data, AOL said, but it conceded that "search queries themselves can sometimes include such information".

The data was similar to that demanded by the US justice department in its recent suit against internet companies. AOL caved in, but Google fought the subpoena and won.