Recently, AOL violated the privacy of 650,000 users by publicly releasing three months of search query records. Search terms can expose the most intimate details of a person's life. These records could be connected back to you and cause you great harm. Would you want strangers to know where you or your child work or go to school? How about everyone seeing search queries that reference your financial information, medical history, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation?"
AOL customers need to know if they are personally affected -- and AOL should be told to rectify the damage done and to improve its privacy-protections in the future.
You can copy the sample letter below:
Dear [Name],
I know you're an AOL user, and I wanted to alert you that AOL may have put your privacy at risk by publicly disclosing the recent search history of 650,000 users. These records can sometimes be traced back to particular identities.
Search terms often include intimate details about your life -- private information about your family, your medical history, your finances, and much more. AOL has endangered customers like you and should be held accountable so that this never happens again.
Ask AOL whether you were one of the victims, and demand they step up to protect your privacy now:
http://action.eff.org/aolsearch
Cut and paste the HTML to use either of these images on your blog or site. You may also save them to your local server.
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