Monday, August 07, 2006

Ethics & AOL

How many people have access to this database? (I do)

Who is concerned by the breach of privacy? (I am)

Who, despite their concerns about privacy, spent a good portion of tonight browsing other people's searches? (I did)

How many ways can you use this data to make $? (I can think of a few)

Is it legal to use this data to make money through SEM? (Probably)

Is it legal to use this data to make money through identity theft? (No)

Is it ethical?

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I must be a dolt. Other than using the Credit Card numbers, or the SSNs how would you make money with this?

2:16 PM  
Blogger Joshua Reich said...

I know all the typo domains in the file have now been registered. Actually, a friend told me this and I haven't checked this, but I'm a blogger not a journalist :)

I imagine that people are registering the domains, and putting up AdSense similar to the other searches made by the same AnonID.

This is probably not the easiest way to make money, but it might work. Though my friend seemed rather annoyed at missing this opportunity, ala his email: Damn every type-in domain was registered by the time I got out of bed.

Other things generally involve SEM - finding underpriced keywords. Long tail, all that. I do have some specifics there, but don't want to share them as I'm rather curious to see how people succeed with these tactics.

2:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

underpriced keywords and longtail niche stuff was what I first thought of too, but that seemed so obvious that I didn't bother mentioning it. I thought you meant something else.

Maybe its not.

Maybe I should be buying up keywords now...

I never thought of typo domains.

Side not. A fascinating subset of the data is "how to" do a search for the top 50 how tos. Very strange.

Number 9 is "how to commit suicide." Number 1 is "how to tie a tie"

6:10 PM  

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