Internet giant AOL is being sued in the USA by 3 of its members for accidentally placing details of their search queries on its research website. The search queries were publicly available for 3 months. This meant that the public could view what these members had been searching the web for.
The legal action argues that AOL:
- Infringed on their privacy
- Failed to make the search queries secure
- Should stop collecting search queries.
The legal action is based upon US law. The US does not have any comprehensive data protection/privacy legislation equivalent to the UK Data Protection Act so the action argues infringement of the Californian Electronic Communications Privacy Act and some Californian "fair business" laws.
We're not US lawyers so we're not going to mull over whether this action is likely to succeed. However, the action goes to show (as if you didn't already know) that:
- Data protection is important
- One aspect of this - keeping your customers information private and secure - is particularly important
- If you fail to protect the personal data that you hold, you risk damage to your reputation and getting sued
It only gets worse for AOL. Whilst at the moment the class action is by 3 members, those members are inviting other AOL members whose search queries were disclosed to join the action. According to Richard Wray's story about the action in the Guardian Technology section, this means that the action could end up being for as much as $658 million.
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