Several weeks ago, AOL admitted it "screwed up" by releasing 20 million search records of over 600,000 AOL users. Yesterday the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission asking the FTC to investigate AOL's breach of consumer privacy. The complaint also wants the FTC to require AOL to strength its privacy protection policies in light of the inadvertent release. The Electronic Frontier Foundation maintains that there was enough information released to allow a few individual users to be identified.

AOL removed the data set from the website intended for academic research purposes, but the information had already been copied and possibly circulated by the time AOL acted. AOL spokesperson Andrew Weinstein stated "AOL did not provide any personally identifiable information to a third party," according to Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post. The Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a confidential brief to the FTC asserting that AOL did just that. In addition to the complaint regarding invasion of privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation also lodged a complaint against AOL for deceptive or unfair trade practices.