AOL to offer free personalized email domains, on day when user's identity is exposed

August 9, 2006 | Matt Marshall

AOL today announced it is offering personalized email domains, which would be an interesting sell — if it weren’t for AOL’s major screw-up on privacy lately.

No thanks for now, AOL.

Arnold (by NTY)

When AOL Research released the search entries of thousands of supposed anonymous users this past weekend, indie programmers went to work to parse the data and match it data with real people. Now the NYT has run a story about AOL Searcher No. 4417749, who it has discovered is a Georgian widow Thelma Arnold (see picture).

You may think it is sick for the NYT to write the story — for outing the poor person. We link to it only because the woman comes off maintaining her respect (she’s revealed as a well-rounded, conscientious person). The NYT at least did a decent job of selecting who it was going to pick on. If this sort of disaster doesn’t get out to the mainstream immediately, the privacy time-bomb will only get more dangerous.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.