Ask.com Data Leak: Search Engine Accidentally Displays User Searches To Public

For at least part of Friday, search engine Ask.com was plagued by a technical issue that resulted in the search queries of its users being publicly viewable online for anyone to see. The log of user actions was available on the Ask.com server status page, which displayed a rolling log of every request sent to the site--including individual search queries. The problem was first spotted by Catalyst director of strategy and innovation Paul Shapiro, who brought attention to the issue Friday morning on Twitter. It's unclear how long the problem persisted before being discovered by Shapiro. According to the server status page, the server had last been restarted three days prior, meaning the information could have been available for three days before being spotted. Each action on the log was accompanied with an IP address.