As expected, AOL has been sued over its online release of data on the Internet searches of more than 650,000 members in late July. A lawsuit seeking class action status was filed against AOL on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The lawsuit (click here for PDF) accuses AOL of violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and of fraudulent and deceptive business practices, among other claims, and seeks at least $5,000 for every person whose search data was exposed.
No AOL user names were attached to the database, but the lawsuit alleges that the search terms contain enough personal information to identify the searchers. Although AOL pulled the data, it continues to remain accessible on other Web sites that reposted it, according to the lawsuit.>>>>snip
http://news.com.com/2061-10803_3-6119218.html?part=rss&tag=6119218&subj=news$5000 X 650,000 = $3,250,000,000 or $3.25 billion dollars.