AOL Apologizes for "Screw Up"

AOL has apologized for their obvious mistake of releasing search history on more than 600k users. The offending file along with the rest of the page on AOL's research center has since been taken down but not before thousands of people had the opportunity to download the data.

"This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it," Andrew Weinstein, an AOL spokesman said. "It was an innocent-enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant."

An ugly and embarrassing day for AOL, but hopefully they will learn just how important privacy is and ensure that nothing like this can happen again.