Thursday, August 10, 2006

Balancing Search Privacy and Personalization

AOL's apocalyptic screw up of releasing 20 million search queries underscores the challenge of search engines and marketers in wanting to track consumer behaviors while respecting their privacy.

The release of query data for 650,000 users will be ultimately lead to several class action lawsuits as some malicious people will sift through the data and use it to stalk, embarrass, or defraud AOL users. It's Christmas in August for criminals, and possibly even law enforcement which could use any data that indicates child pornography or pedophilia to target individuals.

Of course consumers need to be careful in the search terms that they use, and AOL's tying search queries to subscriber IDs should end today. Anyone who uses AOL search when signed on to AOL is asking for trouble.

The burden is undoubtedly on the search engines to only release aggregated data cleansed of any identifying information. Search data that is stored on search engine's servers should be limited to individual sessions only. Consumers who offer -- and are compensated for -- being tracked over time -- should have that data stored on their PCs exclusively. Search history data stored locally should be the only function with access to the series of session information.

Perhaps the fallout from AOL's debacle will prompt the other search engines to develop anonymous browsing that allows for personalization.

By John Gartner at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)

Post a Comment

Name:
Email:
WebSite:
Comment:
Remember Me
Subscribe