Did you know that Google or AOL keep track your online search queries? How comfortable would you feel with this information being made public? Well after a creepy and shocking “mistake” made by an Internet behemoth, hundreds of thousands of internet users had their search histories exposed.

Here’s what happened.

American Online, or AOL as it is better know, released private data about its users without permission. In total, the data added up to about two gigs of information — that’s about 20 million web queries from about 650,000 AOL users. In addition to the basic search strings, the released information also disclosed where the search results led users.

While each person was identified by a number, rather than a name, enough information was available to deduce the names of some of the people based on the searches they had conducted. Take Thelma Arnold for example. The 62-year-old, from the state of Georgia, was identified after the New York Times pieced together information from her search queries that included “numb fingers,” and “dog that urinates on everything.”

Pretty scary, especially considering some of the search strings even included highly personal information such as social security numbers (the American tax file numbers) and more.

The search information was apparently released in an effort to help researchers learn more about search engine queries. Talk about an initiative backfiring. Since the incident earlier in the month, AOL has received much public scrutiny, apologised and removed the information from the public domain — but not before thousands of people had already accessed and saved it to their computers. Even Internetrix managed to get a copy of the file while it was online. We've put a sample of it up on our site for download if you're interested: feel free to have a look here. (NB: the sample is an Excel file 6.6Mb in size, which contains about 65,000 records). Alternatively, you can search through the whole file at www.aolsearchdatabase.com

In the grand scheme of internet security concerns, this event has interesting timing as the debate over the collection and storage of private information rages on. What is particularly interesting is that the information AOL released is the exact sort of information that Google fought the US Federal Government to protect (at least from the Government - you can be sure Google use this information themselves).

In January the American Justice Department subpoenaed four internet companies (Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Google) to disclose web search data as part of an initiative to stop child pornography from spreading. The government wanted these companies to give them every search query typed into its search engine over a one week period. Google resisted the demand and squashed the subpoena, while the rest of the organisations provided the requested data.

What is most frightening here is that it’s pretty simple to see who is doing what online. While there are cases for the collection of this data (child porn, etc), having it readily available impedes on our sense of online anonymity.

Take for example some of the search queries that came out of the AOL scandal. While some are rather innocent like “chicken crock pot recipes” others are a little more out there and the searchers of this information probably wouldn’t want these searches attached to their names. Some of these include, “children who have died from moms with postpartum depression”, “anime sex from ghost in the shell”, and even “strippers men.”

People are attracted to the internet’s anonymous nature. Being able to have curiosity and freely explore information is one reason the internet is so appealing. But knowledge of our search habits might lead people to be afraid to seek information—in fear of being labeled a criminal or a deviant—and has serious repercussions about setting society back many notches.

Plus, until now the average internet user probably had no idea that search engines such as AOL or Google keep search logs, logs that are detailed enough to link searches to individual users. While AOL claims they keep these logs for only 30 days, Google said that it has a “keep everything forever” policy. And while these internet companies have their own privacy policies, few laws or regulations govern the issue.

One difference between AOL and regular search engine customers is that most of AOL's customers pay AOL to get online, mostly using credit cards. As a result, AOL 'knows' better than most search engines 'who' their customers are.

What is scarier and what privacy experts are now discussing, is that the precedent might already be set for governments and authorities to be more intrusive in their demands of people’s online habits. While it may be fine in some cases, perhaps consumers should be concerned about the amount of information that is available about each and every one of us. I mean, even if we’re doing nothing “wrong”, do we really want people knowing what we’re up to?

Perhaps one last thought, not to be paranoid, but if search engines have endless data about each and every one of us, just imagine the information your Internet Service Provider has... Now that’s scary.