Users tagged media attention

This user is User C as described by Miller:

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060809SellingOuttheAOLUser.html

"it's possible to guess that AOL user 710794 is an overweight golfer, owner of a 1986 Porsche 944 and 1998 Cadillac SLS, and a fan of the University of Tennessee Volunteers Men's Basketball team. The same user, 710794, is interested in the Cherokee County School District in Canton, Ga., and has looked up the Suwanee Sports Academy in Suwanee, Ga., which caters to local youth, and the Youth Basketball of America's Georgia affiliate. "

"That's pretty normal. What's not is that user 710794 also regularly searches for "lolitas," a term commonly used to describe photographs and videos of minors who are nude or engaged in sexual acts."

"(source)":http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6103098.html

I present Miller's User A

I think this user is just interested in politics. Holmes, former Republican state chariman, was in the news around this time. The escorts link User A clicked on "http://stlouis.updatedescorts.com" was something that came up in a search for "st. louis corporate travel". It is not shown on aolpsycho. The porn searches have a kind of sterile medical quality to them.

"(source)":http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060809SellingOuttheAOLUser.html

The purpose of this analysis is to show that even roughly describing a user one has found in this database, in an attempt to preseve the user's anonymity, is not effective.

This user is easily found to be "User B", as described by Miller in "Selling Out The AOL User":http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060809SellingOuttheAOLUser.html

"Half of User B's search logs focus on Christian theology, imagery, events, stories, and ways to debunk the Emergent Church. The other half (well, maybe more than half) focus on Playboy models, celebrity sex videos, and 13 year-old school girl porn. Oh, and what the Bible says about asteroids and world destruction. Can we conclude that the person focusing on his faith is the same as the person searching for adult material? Could it be one of those famously rebellious preacher's kids?"

Can anyone find User A? (updated: found)

"User 3745417 laid out her thoughts in detail just as graphic: on March 6 she made eight searches on child molestation and similar phrases. A week later she was trying to find a prisoner in Rikers Island - nine searches in one evening - a subject she returned to at 9.30am on March 25, when she made another eight searches. Between March 27 and March 29 she made 34 successive searches for M&M chocolates in the early evening, followed on the 30th, at 10pm, by four searches for "Kid Party Games". By 10.15pm she was searching for "Whitney Houston"; then, in the course of the next hour, 29 searches on "black porn for women" and similar subjects."

"By the end of April, she was looking for a legal aid lawyer in New York City, a swimsuit, a credit card and a holiday in the Bahamas."

from
They know all about you Monday August 28, 2006 The Guardian

"(source)":http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/search/story/0,,1859785,00.html

"Take user 11110859 of New York City, who fell in love and then was sorry. She was up early on March 7 to buy hip-hop clothes from G-Unit; by March 26, however, there was more excitement in her life. Searches on "losing your virginity" were followed by three weeks of frantic worry about whether she was pregnant: stuff she might have hesitated to tell her best friend or her mother is all quite clear from the Google searches. But by the end of April the pregnancy scare was over and had been replaced by a broken heart. Even before she had stopped asking "Can you still be pregnant even though your period came?" she was asking "Why do people hurt others" and this was the theme of almost all her questions throughout May, culminating on the afternoon of the 19th, when she asked "How to love someone who mistreated you?"; "What does Jesus say about loving your enemies?" "What does God mean when he says bless those who spitefully use you?" Then she spent a couple of days trying to buy Betty Boop postage stamps, and the next thing we know, she was asking first for directions to the New York prison on Rikers Island, then "What items are we allowed to bring at Rikers Island" and finally for "uncoated playing cards".

from: They know all about you Monday August 28, 2006 The Guardian

"(source)":http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/search/story/0,,1859785,00.html

This florida husband contemplated killing his wife's lesbian lover. I initially found him when I searched on the keyphrase "kill my wife". The thing he actually searched for was "kill my wife's mistress". This was part of a long series of searches that involve infidelity, alcoholism, erectile dysfunction, the mafia and the St. Petersburg YMCA.

They know all about you

Monday August 28, 2006
The Guardian

"In March this year, a man with a passion for Portuguese football, living in a city in Florida, was drinking heavily because his wife was having an affair. He typed his troubles into the search window of his computer. "My wife doesnt love animore," he told the machine. He searched for "Stop your divorce" and "I want revenge to my wife" before turning to self-examination with "alchool withdrawl", "alchool withdrawl sintoms" (at 10 in the morning) and "disfunctional erection". On April 1 he was looking for a local medium who could "predict my futur"."

"On April 4, for instance, user 14162375, the melancholy Portuguese-American in Florida, seems to have passed out on the keyboard at 6.20pm, when he asked, suddenly, "llllfkkgjnnvjjfokrb" then "vvvvbmkmjk" and "vvglhkitopppfoppr". An hour later he had recovered enough to search for variations on his wife's name - he thought she might have moved to New England. On the evening of April 16, matters came to a head. "My cheating wife," he typed; and then, five times, "I want to kill myself," and then "I want to make my wife suffer," followed quickly by "Kill my wifes mistress," "My wifes ass," "A cheating wife". Two days after that he was back looking for audio surveillance and bugging equipment and four weeks later he seemed to have cheered up and was looking for motorcycle insurance."

"(source)":http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/search/story/0,,1859785,00.html

(Great article BTW)