Microsoft Watching What You Watch

Arkham writes "According to this Wired article, Microsoft has contracted with a company called Predictive Networks to track the viewing habits of Microsoft TV devices. The Predictive software creates a "Digital Silhouette" that is described as being able "to tell them that Joe watches a lot of baseball, likes Situation Comedies, and responds favorably to commercials that use humor."." I've always said that I'm cool with my Tivo tracking what I watch, provided it never tells anyone my name and address to anyone. If it meant I watched more targetted advertisements, I'd fast forward less.

Comments

data mining

[mknapp905]

I understand that companies are trying to gain as much data as possible on the population. But at what point does this become intrusive?? You know what I watch on TV, You know where I shop, You know what Prescriptions I take, You know what Web Sites I go to. Is there such a thing as privacy anymore???

Some *good* uses of such technology

[iapetus]

There are some good uses of this sort of technology as well, beyond targetted adverts. Being able to draw on what other people like to watch to suggest things to see, for example. If I like programs A and B, and the vast majority of people who also like them like program C as well, the system should be recommending that I try it. A step forward from the single-user service that TiVo offers.

There seem to be some problems

[DaFlusha]

On the Predictive Networks website privacy page they say it is their policy that

"No individual's channel viewing or click-stream data is saved, shared or sold"

Now, I'm wondering, do they literally just group all television shows into "Situation Comedy", "Baseball", etc.? This would mean that the classifications could be misleading. What if a person only watches shows that star a certain actor? Or shows that feature women/men in revealing outfits? This privacy policy wioll work for ads, but their model of analyzing particular shows could lead to a lot of faulty statistcal analysis.

What scares me is that once they find out that they can't accurately model viewer behavior with their current privacy policy, they might dump it in favor of a less restrictive one.

-Darius

What year is this?

[NightWhistler]

Is it just me, or are more people getting a very strong "1984" vibe here? I already saw myself at my Linux box, just hacking away merrily when the voice of Big Brother Bill came out of the tv... and then I woke up screaming...

Welcome to the world of Microsoft

[tom1974]

Where they know what you watch, what you listen to, who you are and where and what you surf, where you live, where you work, what games you play, your credit card number, and some day who you voted for.

And much much more.

With all their products spread across from one end of the spectrum to the other, wouldn't be that difficult for them to stich all the user info together and actually end up knowing more about you than your mother does.

Combine this is psychological profiling

[pubjames]

Tin foil helmet firmly on...

Police forces and intelligence agencies currently use psychological profiling when trying to hunt down serial killers, terrorists, etc.

Imagine a profile suggested the criminal in question would probably respond "favorably to commercials that use humor". Do you think that Microsoft has done a deal with the FBI to share the data they get from this?

Are we going to have to start to worry about our profiles if we start watching too many violent films or are obsessive fans of the X-Files?

Don't be too alarmist

[Jon Erikson]

It's not like some kind of database where the Evil Goons at Microsoft can look up exactly what you were doing minute-by-minute every day of your life now is it?

Systems like this already exist in other areas - think of the loyalty cards that many shops now run for instance. In fact, loyalty cards store more detailed information than this system does.

I for one don't oppose the idea of having a TV that didn't show be some of the quite incredible amounts of crap that I would never want to watch. I don't much like adverts either, but if I have to watch them I'd rather see relevant ones than more pointless rubbish about stuff that I can't even use.

Re:Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

[ddillman]

I'm sorry to be anti-anti here, but seriously, the #1 factor in business is Marketing!!!! Marketing! I mean, admit it, when ThinkGeek has something phat on the banner ad above the news, don't tell me you don't click on it...

Phat? Sorry. Not everyone who reads Slashdot is a 12-17 year old kiddie. Not everyone shares your habit of clicking on 'phat' ads. I have yet to click on a banner ad on Slashdot, so yes, I can tell you that.

Yes, marketing is a major portion of business trying to sell us products. But there's still a point where it becomes less of an information source (which is marketing's purported goal, to inform us of a product or service), and more of an unwelcome intrusion.

Tracking equals higher prices

[fleener]

The more companies know about us, the more they can charge for their products. Example: a national grocery store implements a "membership card" system and tracks what I buy. Pretty soon is knows exactly how much it can raise the price of a loaf of french bread before people will stop buying it. Next thing you know, my 79 cent loaf costs $1.39 and I'm supposed to feel lucky when they sometimes offer a special membership price of $1.10. Uh huh.

Oh, and that situation isn't so hypothetical in my neighborhood.

Re:Tracking equals higher prices

[Sycraft-fu]

Ummm, I would highly suggest that you do a little refresher from Econ 101, and don't think so highly of yourself. The companies couldn't care less about you personally in terms of pricing. You are just one of several million customers. The price of their goods is easily summed up in one sentace:

Charge the price that maximizes profits.

It's really that simple. As you raise your price, you sell less, as you lower it you sell more. Each and every person has a different threshold for when and how much they buy (and it varies day by day). So the job of a company is to find the price point that maximizes profit. If you sell too cheap, ya you sell a lot, but it doesn't make up for cost. If you sell to expensive you make more per unit but don't sell enough units.

Well because the objective of companies is to make the most money, the price that they seek is the one at which all the costs and profits balance the best, and they make the most profit. Now of course there are other factors like when competitors get into price wars and such, but all other things being equal, a comapny is going to charge the price where they make the most profit.

Now they don't need any kind of special traking cards to determine this price, inventory control can tell you this. You charge a buck, you sell X many units/wekk. YOu rase the price toa buck and a quarter and now you only sell Y many. Then you just do the math, and figure out where you make the most money.

They care about your data for reasons of marketing and such, not pricing. The methods for figuring that out are very, very old.

This isn't new

[saqmaster]

How many other companies do you think the cable companies etc. sell this statistical information to?

I mean, come on, this is not new. You get a ton of questionairres through the post all the time, some people fill them in, some don't. But those who do wouldn't turn around and complain that company X is using their data, which they submitted.

You'll probably find that somewhere in your contract for your cable/satellite TV, it states that the company may use information based on your viewing to form statistics, or for supply to an external statistics company.

I'm sorry, but I don't see Microsoft obtaining this information (in a perfectly legal way) being anything other than 'standardly' competitive, along with several other companies. Do you not think even people like TiVO use this kind of information? The whole media industry relies on statistics such as this. Stop being paranoid.

Talking about banners etc., from other threads. Has anyone heard of CMS perhaps?

Many large sites are keen to track their visitors. They are keen to find trends and to personalize content based on what the user likes. If the user clicks on a banner about 'cars', then maybe that user would like the 'portal' site more if there was more car content on it. I don't see that as snooping. I see that as feature enriching the users experience, which in turn brings in more cash, which in turn improves the experience and the site. What is so wrong in that?

Everyone is getting paranoid.

Re:Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

[jkorty]

You were doing fine until you gave an example. Microsoft *is* interested in knowing that you are 3.5 miles from Meijer .. they can sell that info to Starbucks who then sends you a coupon to the Starbucks 2.5 miles away. They *do* want to know that you take 20 steps from your car to your front door..they can sell that info to a canopy company who will then send a salesman over to pitch a beautiful blue canopy so that you will be protected from the rain during those 20 steps.

There isn't *anything* about you that isn't interesting to *someone* who would be willing to pay for it.

Re:Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

[Tim C]

I'm sorry to be anti-anti here, but seriously, the #1 factor in business is Marketing!!!! Marketing! I mean, admit it, when ThinkGeek has something phat on the banner ad above the news, don't tell me you don't click on it...

I don't click on it.

They don't deliver the really cool stuff to the UK :-(

That's my privacy!!! Not the fact that I work in computers.

But I want that sort of privacy, too - what I do for a living is my own damn business, I should be allowed to choose who I divulge that knowledge to. I know that marketing people are just trying to make a living, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it, just like some people here probably don't like the fact that I get paid to write closed-source software, now that they know. That dislike isn't going to stop me, and my dislike isn't going to stop the marketers, but it doesn't mean that I have to make it easier for them.

Cheers,

Tim

Re:Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

[lfourrier]

That's your^h^h^h^hthe point of view you express, but /. readers must understand /. readers are present worldwide and have different sensibilities.
Once , there were USA/capitalism and USSR/communism, with socialist Europe providing middle ground.
Now, the middle ground as moved toward capitalism, and as such, a business only view of a social organisation become prevalent.
The fact you are intoxicated to accept it doesn't mean market-driven is the only way to manage society. Individual protection, and restrictions to what corporations do, are principles you cannot throw away for a big part of the world.

I don't like being manipulated

[sam_handelman]

Which means, yes, that I don't like marketing. In the final analysis, while I agree we can never eradicate the marketing/promotion/advertising sector of our economy, I think that it's clearly bloated and that, more importantly, it is not, as a whole, serving the needs of the larger society.

In particular, it is not good for us to have people observe what we do, and then try and configure our cultural environment, which is a huge part of what constructs our consciousness, as adults as well as as children, in order to get us to part with our money.

I don't want people to find out that I'm an (act surprised) environmentalist, and that start spinning every malarky under the sun as being environmental (Dow-corning hugs trees!) I don't want people tracking my eating habits and advertising junk food when my blood sugar is low. Even if the targeted advertisements aren't 1) lies or 2) promoting an action which is detrimonious to my health or well-being, I don't want them to be tailored in such a fashion that I am less likely to just tune them out.

Why do I care? Because, even though I don't view myself as especially vulnerable to advertisements, my thoughts and ideas can still be affected by the things, and if real scientific cleverness is applied to the question of "how can we find out what sort of ad this demographic group will respond to?", then, well, damn, they'll come up with ads that more people in my cohort will respond to. Even if those ads don't succeed in selling me more stuff, I think that the advertisers will successfully identify things that make those ads poison my thought processes for a longer time.

Let me say also that most justifications that people come up with for having an advertising sector to the economy at all are blatantly self serving.

Yes, it is just like that.

[Erris]

I can't get too worked up about this... as long as the consumer knows when he buys a Microsoft TV product that it 'comes with' this kind of monitoring. That, to me, is the key -- full and open disclosure, and a consumer educated enough to know what that means.

Bingo! The article was made to make sure you know and have a valid reference, not to get your worked up. Most people who read Slashdot knew that M$ would be doing this. Now we have a place to point because the brazen bitches have admitted what they are going to do. Don't look to M$ to make anyone aware of what they will do with the information. 99.99% (If they manage to sell 10,000, heh!) of people who buy this will have no idea.

Strangely enough, this is much closer to the grocery store card than you might think. I've never, ever seen a grocery store card contract that says, "we will collect infomation on your buying habbits to sell to advertisers, the FBI or anyone else who will pay, and the information will be passed on to creditors in case of chapter 11 filing by this company." I have, however, lived in a place where there were NO grocery stores that did not REQUIRE one of their stupid cards to buy groceries with a check. "Security" against bad checks is the only reason I've ever heard. The alternatives were to carry cash (inconvienent) or use a credit card (even more invasive).

What these companies are abusing is your image for comercial gain without your consent. While a collection of buying habbits, credit records and contact information may not look like a photograph or other traditional likeness, it is a model of your person. Just like that photograph, it is built entirely at the expense of the abuser. In the US, at least, use of your image for comercial purposes without express written consent is against the law.