“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”
(”Don’t let me be misunderstood”, The Animals)

As the AOL data leak makes blogs still buzz and users make – again and again – considerations about privacy, AOL plays dumb and says “it’s been a mistake” (interesting post here too). They teared down the links to data, but of course a bunch of mirrors are already up and running. Oh, and by the way, the first AOL data web interface is up and running too. Somebody even condensed data in a nice and tiny excel spreadsheet. An AOL employee suggests not to keep search logs anymore, yet I believe this won’t actually be a possible solution. Moreover, I really doubt people would believe it, standing to latest events .

Some scary but interesting data start to pop out after data miners’ analysis of search query records: a lots of people seem to be planning murders!

However, is there anybody out there who really believes that a plethora of PhD’s, MSc’s, scientists, researchers and senior engineers may barely think to release such a golden amount of data without understanding its consequences? Well, I personally don’t. I won’t, and I don’t want to. Yet, I keep wondering about what really took AOL to release data, and can’t find answers.