AOL's chief technology officer and two other employees have been fired after the company revealed private search terms of more than 650,000 of its users on a public website, a source said. AOL would say only that chief technology officer (CTO) Maureen Govern had left the Internet giant, after 20 million keyword searches by its users were accidentally posted online.
The source, who requested anonymity, said Govern had been dismissed and was being replaced for now by her predecessor, John McKinley, who is AOL's president for digital services.
"To help ensure this type of incident never happens again two employees who released the data and the supervisor (Govern) have been fired," the source said.
AOL admitted two weeks ago to a "screw-up" after the search data was published on a new company website designed to help search-technology researchers.
Only a few hundred of the searches contained sensitive information such as credit card and Social Security numbers, but observers have underlined that all the data passed on was a violation of privacy.
The Time Warner unit's chief executive, Jonathan Miller, said in an e-mail to employees that a task force had been set up to review AOL's privacy practices.
"I wanted to let you know that Maureen Govern, our chief technology officer, has decided to leave AOL effective immediately. We've asked John McKinley to step back in as CTO, and he has graciously accepted," Miller's memo said.
"We've put together a four-part plan that is being implemented immediately and which we believe will further enhance our privacy policy and practices," he said.
The searches were identified only by anonymous user-ID numbers, making identification difficult. But the company said it pulled the information it had collected from March to May off the website after bloggers became aware of it.
AOL said earlier this month that it was likely to lay off about 5,000 employees, or a quarter of its workforce, in the next six months as it fights off stiff competition from Yahoo and Google.
AOL is also planning to stop charging broadband users for e-mail and multimedia services as part of a drive to revamp itself.
