Such is the premise of a fictional play titled “User 927″, in which investigators turn to search engine query logs in order to locate a missing person.
The story’s central clue is the real-life online search log of an AOL subscriber - identified only as User 927 - that was released to the public two years ago in a well-publicized privacy gaffe. Alltop said he was astonished when AOL intentionally released some 19 million search requests made over three months by more than 650,000 subscribers. The logs were meant to help academic researchers, but they were posted on a public site and quickly circulated once a blogger discovered them.
