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

August 9, 2006 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |
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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.

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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 Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Emily Cyr
    Put AOL to the garbage and use Vazigo.com to keep your privacy!! Just a little problem, this search engin it's only in french for the moment..