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TiVo Watches the Super Bowl
Boone^ writes: "While millions of people were seeing a tremendous football game, TiVo was busy collecting statistics about the Super Bowl viewing habits of its subscribers. Based on a random sampling of 10,000 of the 280,000 subscribers, they found out that Pepsi/Britney was the subject of the most replayed Ad(s), and not surprisingly the play that got the most attention was Vinatieri's game-winning FG."
http://www.ifilm.com/superbowl
Although alot of the various companies also have their ads up on their corporate sites
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
All their data is aggregated. They can't tell what you paused/replayed, just what someone paused/replayed.
Unfortunately they're only available in Windows Media format, but MSNBC has a good list of this year's highlights, as well as a bunch of classic ads from the past Super Bowls.
-David Ziegler
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No, they can't tell what commercials you watch. They can tell what things anonymous people do -- the stats are not tied to the accounts.
BN
You can opt out of the information gathering at any time. Any information that tivo gets is anonymous, and can't be linked to you.
Tivo is actually very aware of privacy issues. Anytime it makes a change to it's privacy policy, however minor, it sends a email to its subscribers explaining what the change is, and why it was made. You can't say that about many companies.
Stop the FUD - you know you can. Anonymous, opt-out, what's the problem?
Jeff
Those backdoors aren't anything new, nor is the knowledge that they log data about viewers viewing habits. Keystroke logging is how they do it. (Its far more accurate -- but keep in mind that Tivo doesn't know, even remotely, what commercials you may or may not be fast forwarding through, so they don't have any useful info about you at all!) Tivo has NEVER hidden the fact. They have been extremely upfront with it in their terms of service and on their website.
Its your own damn fault if you didn't read up on it. But keep in mind before you start calling for some silly protest, that Tivo doesn't correlate information they gleem with who it came from -- only from where they are from, and the provide that data in aggregate to networks who actually *know* what commercials and such were being shown. So if the networks know that 20% of people in 02139 actually stopped to watch the new Volkswagon commercial during a rerun episode of Will and Grace, how does that impact your privacy in the slightest? Volkswagon doesn't know who you are. NBC doesn't know who you are. Tivo doesn't know you were watching a Volkswagon commercial. So where's the problem?
...who don't get to watch the Superbowl commercials, be sure to check out ifilm.com's Superbowl Page where you can check them out.
I first found out about the since deceased AdCritic by looking for a place to check out the SB commercials, and it looks like these guys have filled that void for me.
For those of you who aren't aware, Canadian cable companies cut out the American commercials and insert our own, unique brand of crap in their place.
At least this year, there was a game worth watching!
$0.02 (CDN)
The actual level of data collected is way more than just what channel you are watching, the data is so specific it can tell how many times and what time you pressed any button on the remote at any time, be it volume control ,pause buttons anything!
This data to advertisers is known as "gold dust"
advertisers could find out things like:
did you watch their advert if so how many times
did you forward or rewind it if so how far
did you cut the volume if so for how long
did you flip channel if so did you flip it back
when you flipped what advert did you see on the other channel
and just about any viewing habit data they choose , and guess what , your paying a subscription for this service so for Tivo this is a win win win situation and must be laughing in their condos on malibu beach.
now this report is rather biased towards privacy and some say the report is flawed blah blah but the actual captured data logs are not.
Now whereas the data is "anonomous" it is linked to subscribers via postcode/zipcode and certainly here in the UK if i give my postcode to some companies they can tell exactly which house iam living in , not totally anonomous, and after all, they only need to know what the "house" is watching as everyone sits down and watches the same program together so individual advert profiling would be irrelavent.
devices like Tivo could work without selling this data to advertisers but the might hand of marketing is pretty good at persuasding poor companies that the financial recompence is worthwhile.
IMHO the whole point of a Tivo is data collection hence right from the start the units have been designed as profiling devices capturing all available statistical data, i mean what use is recording when i press volume buttons in determining that the simpsons is on and if i would like to watch it ?
the sooner people complain and see these companies for what they really are the better
can't we have digital video recording in a stand-alone box like the analog recorders?
Because you have then destroyed most of the functionality of the TiVo. Without the program guide data the machine cannot get you season passes to you favorite shows, it can't give you an on screen display of whats playing on the other channels right now, it can't even name the stuff you've recorded automatically (so you've got to pick what show you want to watch from a list of dates and times)
It's a linux box that calls up tivo every night to get the program schedule, and reports some statistics as well.
Sean.
I doubt you have a TiVo.
If you did, you would have gotten the message (TiVo has an area marked with an email icon where they can send you messages about service), marked super important, ON YOUR TIVO (so you can't say you used a fake email to register), that explained the privacy policy changes.
1. They are all anonymous. They are not correlating users to data, they're just uploading raw data. TiVo has been honest in all their other areas, so I see no reason to doubt them here (they'll even still give you phone support if you admit you hacked your tivo, and try to help you get it working again, including triggering server flags to auto-re-download the original software/etc. How many companies can you say that about?)
2. You can opt out. If you call the service number, give them your account number, you can tell them to leave you out of stats. This was also explained in the message.
Finally, Phillips has NOTHING AT ALL to do with tivo service, which is where the logs are going. Contacting phillips about tivo usage stats is like contacting Dell to complain about getting porn ads over ICQ.
Do some research before you troll.
Because as a company they've done a good job of acting in good faith with their community. They've complied with the GPL in their kernel modifications, they've also been very tolerant of the hacking of their devices.
They provide a good product and have a record of dealing openly and honestly with their customers. So yes, I'd like for them to succeed.
Ifilm has all of them, but in Real format.
The page is here
Brant
Argle. Bargle.