A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 (2006)

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html

by acqbu • 2 years ago

135 45 2 years ago

acqbu• 2 years ago

kleiba• 2 years ago

Couldn't this functionality be automized somehow? Every time there's a link on HN to a paywalled article, I have to the same dance:

1. Click on the link

2. Find out it's behind a paywall

3. Go back in the browser

4. Click on the "comments" link.

5. Look for the post that has the archive.is version of it.

6. Click on that.

Surely that could somehow be collapsed into just a single click?

hoherd• 2 years ago

Open the current page in archive.li:

    javascript:(function()%7B%0A%20window.location%20%3D%20%22https%3A%2F%2Farchive.li%2F%22%20%2B%20window.location%3B%0A%7D)()

rsaarelm2• 2 years ago

You can go in the browser URL field and type "archive.is/" in front of the URL and press enter after step 2. It'll either redirect you to an existing archive page or lets you create one if one doesn't exist.

danjc• 2 years ago

It cant be a first party feature.

rsaarelm2• 2 years ago

Here's how this could be done as a HN-side feature with zero interaction with archive.is servers:

* Compile a list of domains like nytimes.com that have soft paywalls.

* When a link like https://example.com/ is submitted and its domain is on the paywall list, insert [archive](https://archive.is/timegate/https://example.com/) after it in the title area. Just prefix the timegate part and it's a working link.

c22• 2 years ago

I usually just start with the comments. If I see an archive link I'll use that (assuming I've determined that the source article is worth reading at all).

DicIfTEx• 2 years ago

There was also a theatre production produced around AOL User 927: https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/05/uare-what-u-se...

And a documentary series about User 711391: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1455044/

samwillis• 2 years ago

This is important to look back on in the context of what's happing now with AI tools. This story is obviously about the leak of the data publicly, but what it shows is the profiling that is available to corporations.

Search has exposed so much data about ourselves to the services we use with very little regulation on what they are permitted to do with it inside their own walls.

My fear with AI is that we are moving toward sending even more data to party services. Tools such a co-pilot (which I enjoy using) are a gold mine for behavioural analysis. The profiling that will be possible with these tools is extraordinary and we don't yet fully understand the implication.

It's because of this that I'm a massive proponent of "Local AI". We need to be pushing for the industry to adopt a local inference architecture asap. It needs to become the standard pattern as early as possible to reduce the risk of the AI revolution being a repeat of the invasive internet search and advertising industry.

Spooky232• 2 years ago

The issue with AI is that people are going to be creating work product with it, and it doesn't require the extensive infrastructure that search has.

Google knows alot about your behavior - they can and have been able to correlate online behavior with health and meatspace actions to identify budding extremists or people at risk of addiction, etc. AI will bring that capability to business processes.

With the number of little companies that are springing up, it will become much easier for outside parties to figure out how instituions work. This capability exists, but it's gated by Google and Microsoft and they have drawn lines to protect the overall business. Some jackass will install a creepy AI tool to scrape outlook and salesguys will be able to get a profile of who makes what decision in a company, for example.

dartos2• 2 years ago

AI does take a ton of infrastructure. You need data collection and curation. Massive amounts of training hardware.

And a large infrastructure to ensure you can scale. No easy feat with the current GPU stack.

paulmd• 2 years ago

Google knows alot about your behavior - they can and have been able to correlate online behavior with health and meatspace actions to identify budding extremists or people at risk of addiction, etc. AI will bring that capability to business processes.

not in the EU it won't.

if you can de-anonymize people from the data it's not anonymous, and collecting this data at all would be illegal in the EU without user consent, unless it's being used solely for the purpose of delivering the service.

whoisthemachine• 2 years ago

I fully agree. If local AI takes traction, then we actually have a unique opportunity to take away some of that massive profiling, as some of what you use search engines for today can be done by AI. This may be why there's some fear-mongering around truly open-source AI and such by the big ones.

akira25013• 2 years ago

Noise generation is the only answer the common person has against the giant corporate machine.

You need a personal "AI" that just does random searches unconnected with your life, constantly, in the background, and then injects this data into all the portals that are watching you.

Ultimately, their data will become dominated by noise, and ultimately useless to the point of severely destroying the value of the entire enterprise and data collection mechanisms in the first place.

No matter how many tools you make "local only" you're only a forgotten "send telemetry back to the mothership" checkbox away from being right where you started.

cj• 2 years ago

This might work at an individual level, but it isn’t scalable to the general population.

It’s hard to imagine any population-scale solution that doesn’t involve regulation.

The biggest problem with regulation (in my eyes) is that it thwarts competition between countries. E.g. if the US imposes restrictions on technology, innovation is incentivized to happen elsewhere. The EU has been bold on the privacy regulatory front with GDPR and the like, and has probably lost out on immeasurable monetary gains as a result. There’s a huge cost to regulation, but it works.

abound• 2 years ago

Ultimately, their data will become dominated by noise

This was a plot point in a Neal Stephenson novel, "Fall [...]". It's been a while so I'm fuzzy on the details, but one of main characters floods the Internet with constant AI-generated content, but I can't remember if it was to drown out bad PR or break the anonymous identification mechanism ubiquitous in the book's world.

pests• 2 years ago

Until the noise you generate gets you on legitimate watch lists. One day it's going to search for a random product or compound that your neighbor two houses over just murdered their baby sister with and now you are an active suspect and get your electronics seized for a full search.

jll29• 2 years ago

That episode (releasing the AOL search query log file for research purposes and subsequent aftermath) led to some firings at the company, but some information retrieval searchers used this log to conduct important experiments.

The "60s lady with the dog that kept peeing her sofa" got her hour of fame, and the whole thing became a case study in de-anonymization.

A few pointers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233390862_Privacy_P...

https://github.com/wasiahmad/aol_query_log_analysis

https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/08/15/100592/who-benef...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00200...

https://isquared.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/mining-search-logs...

Lammy• 2 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20131016001916/http://www.someth...

https://web.archive.org/web/20130822124159/http://www.someth...

https://web.archive.org/web/20130822124204/http://www.someth...

------------------------------------

https://web.archive.org/web/20131024112051im_/http://i.somet...

https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/03/23/san-jose-man-convicte...

elzbardico• 2 years ago

2006... If they only knew....

rvnx2• 2 years ago

Now people create accounts to get their searches directly tied to their profile

HeatrayEnjoyer2• 2 years ago

Like that new search engine that's better than googly?

karaterobot• 2 years ago

Re-identification of supposedly anonymous data was a problem twenty years ago, and is a bigger problem today. Soon it may become a crisis, as the tools needed to do it become more and more turnkey, effective, and commodified. Now we dox as in a glass, darkly, etc.

mmvasq3• 2 years ago

This data is already "re-identified" by some somebodies. And complete intent to harm over a course of 5 years proven out. I have evidence, lots of it. The individuals initially affected by the search leak need to be notified by a representative of AOL and probably SOE. Time to stop the dark patterns of attribution games and ready the individuals for what is to come. If I had been caught alone, I probably would have not made it through the harassment that came from the people that have re-identified the data.

mmvasq3• 2 years ago

Have three identities confirmed - yet the individuals doing the harassment all know best evidence has to come from law enforcement and the logs - not my screenshots. It's part of the game they play with the data.

neonate• 2 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20170715075814/https://www.nytim...

zx8080• 2 years ago

There's one thing could work, but which would be very hard or impossible to implement: management personal responsibility for private data loss/exposure.

mortallywounded• 2 years ago

Maybe some day we'll have a PIR-based[1] search engine-- but then you couldn't harvest data on your users and sell personalized ads, so maybe not.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_information_retrieval

mmvasq3• 2 years ago

My data is in this list someone used for "research". They evidently correlated with Sony Everquest Chats, LinkedIn, Twitter, AOL, corporate email, Meta, Amazon Purchases, Natural Language Processing Data collections, some DFIR (digital forensics) data collection, HR records and so much more. I would say at the time they collected the info I was planning renaissance fest attire, studying security topics and frantically figuring out identities of some gamers who dogpiled on me as a few made genuine threats towards my life and livelihood.

I'd say yes, throw disinformation at at, as once I started noticing someone was really doing that level of tracking I did throw disinfo at it... a lot. The problem was with their interpretations from there of searches intentionally made to mess them up - as I neither had consent yet realized I was being stalked.

That went on and on and on - until people died - my father thought I was swatting him (I had a welfare check made - not a swat - as they were disclosing his financial advisor and info - he's white and safe presumably) . Yet yes, people did die. It is evident no one understands it is never just them in research or in a channel for conversations. The result of the whole thing was my childhood best friend also being left homeless and run over (by someone opportunistic in the whole process). My brother de-housed by a gang member a party kept sending about (one actually poisoned my dog). My father alienated. My sister used as a puppet for extortion instead of being rehabbed.

It's very very very ugly the string of deaths and alienation that came from what they thought was funny research into AI.

This old data needs to be located and disposed of or put into proper custodianship. It's grown teeth that cost lives. Throwing misinfo at it is just crapping up the Internet more to push to web 3.0, where the same problem will thrive. Requires legislation. Not quite relaxed enough to articulate how and what right now due to the extensive harassment that came about from it all. Maybe some day. It's been pretty terrorizing.

neverrroot• 2 years ago

I'm trying to learn more about what disinformation is, could you please post your thoughts under the following Ask HN post?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39554369

A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 (2006)

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