Fergie's Tech Blog

Leaked AOL Data Creates Dilemma for Academics

A New York Times article by Katie Hafner and Tom Zeller Jr., via The International Herald-Tribune, reports that:

When AOL researchers released three months' worth of users' query logs to a publicly accessible Web site late last month, Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University, downloaded the data right away. But when a firestorm over privacy breaches erupted, he decided against using them.

"Now it's sitting there, in cold storage," said Kleinberg, who works on algorithms for understanding the structure of the Web and searching it. "The number of things it reveals about individual people seems much too much. In general, you don't want to do research on tainted data."

After the data were released for academic researchers like Kleinberg to work with, many were torn, loath to conduct research with them as they balanced a chronic need for useful data against concerns over individual privacy.

posted by Fergie @ 8/22/2006 08:55:00 PM