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TiVo Watches the Super Bowl

Posted by michael on from the watching-us-watching-them dept.

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."

4 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. Super Bowl Ads Online by Alien54 · · Score: 5, Informative
    The Superbowls ads are all on line at Ifilm:

    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"
  2. Re:Whoa whoa whoa... by Ageless+Stranger · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. *GASP* TiVo has a privacy policy! by jspayne · · Score: 5, Informative
    The highlights (from tivo.com, support/privacy):

    The TiVo DVR collects certain types of information from its users, including Anonymous Viewing Information, Diagnostic Information, Commerce Information, and Service Information.

    TiVo has no way to access any of your Personally Identifiable Viewing Information from your DVR without your prior consent. Absent your consent, the TiVo service has no way of knowing what shows you-as an individual or household- have watched, recorded, or rated with "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down."

    TiVo does collect Anonymous Viewing Information; that is, information about viewing choices made while using your DVR, but that does not identify you as an individual or household. In other words, there is no personally identifiable information associated with the viewing information that could identify the viewing information as coming from you or your household. TiVo also collects Diagnostic Information from a small number of randomly sampled DVRs for quality control purposes. If you don't want even your Anonymous Viewing Information or Diagnostic Information used in any way, simply tell us by calling our toll free number (1-877-367-8486).

    If you affirmatively elect to engage in a commercial transaction using the TiVo service, such as by responding to an advertisement on the TiVo service, TiVo will collect and disclose your Commerce Information to the commerce partner fulfilling the transaction.

    TiVo intends to make available new services in the future. These services will be governed by the privacy policies of the respective service providers.

    Note that the hackers in the underground have verified what information is sent to TiVo, and that the opt-out really does stop that information transfer.

    Stop the FUD - you know you can. Anonymous, opt-out, what's the problem?

    Jeff

  4. You "found" backdoors? by tgd · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?