A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749: AOL's blunder in releasing search records of AOL users. Although the records only contained a string of numbers for each user, it didn't take long for people to put a face to user number 4417749.
Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher’s anonymity, but it was not much of a shield.
It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga.
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