on Aug 8th, 2006How To Commit Suicide
The AOL User Search Scandal
(disclaimer: If you have reached this site by actually searching “how to commit suicide” and are considering suicide please seek help right now. You can call 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) if you need to talk to someone who cares.)
This weekend AOL released 36 million lines of search query indexed by an anonymous id. The thinking was to provide something neat for research purposes. By using an anonymous id they thought that they had removed all personal information. Boy were they ever wrong. It turns out that the search information itself is often a key to a person’s identity. People were searching for themselves, addresses, social security numbers, credit card numbers. All kinds of things.
Here are links to some of the fallout:
- User 17556639 who wants to kill his wife Hi Honey! (hopefully he’s just a writer doing research…)
- The Consumerist 1 The Consumerist 2
- Techcruch
- AOL’s “official” apology. Best quote ever, from AOL:
This was a screw up, and we’re angry and upset about it.
HA! You’re angry and upset? What about your users whose privacy you violated!
- And finally the slashdot crowd.
Since I actually work with databases for a living I was interested in this as a dataset for actual research purposes. Last night I finally finished loading it all into a mysql database and started taking a peep at the data. Since my recent “how to” posts have been so popular the first thing I did was search for the top 20 “how to” searches. Here were the results:
Top 20 How To Searches
- 259 - how to tie a tie
- 254 - how to
- 202 - how to draw
- 196 - how to write a resume
- 183 - how to use printer
- 171 - how to get pregnant
- 147 - how to masterbate
- 141 - how to install shift cable on a 140 mercruiser
- 118 - how to commit suicide
- 117 - how to have sex
- 106 - how to do yo-yo tricks
- 103 - how to give a blow job
- 97 - how to gain weight
- 94 - how to lose weight
- 90 - how to build a catapult
- 84 - how to write a book
- 81 - how to pass a drug test
- 76 - how to masturbate
- 75 - how to make meth
- 72 - how to grow marijuana
“How To” searches made up only .36% of all the searchs, but what a fascinating subset they are! It’s gratifying to know that the number 1 search “how to” is “how to tie a tie”, or that the number 3 “how to” is “how to draw.” But chilling to know that the number 9 “how to” search is “how to commit suicide.”
Overall 9 of the top 20 searches are related to either drugs, death, or sex. That probably tells you all you need to know about Western society.
Also, Is it more or less disturbing the most people don’t know how to spell “masturbate”, or that there are 223 searches for how to masturbate?