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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."
You are most welcome to opt-out of this data gathering.
I leave it on because 1)I believe them when they say they only aggragate the data and 2)It's an important part of their business model and I want them to succeed.
Yeah. Take a look at this report, which goes into some technical detail about what your TiVo sends back (they watched the modem line as data transferred):
http://www.privacyfoundation.org/privacywatch/ report.asp?id=62&action=0
Your TiVo machine basically just sends its syslog home every night, complete with information like this:
Except it's transmitted in a form that looks like this:
and of course it's anonymized, traceable only to your zipcode.
The PrivacyFoundation.org report linked above broke the news that the way the anonymized data is FTP'd up to TiVo's homebase leaves a way that an insider employee (or an unscrupulous, lying company) could potentially correlate your syslog to your name, instead of just your zipcode. I've no idea whether TiVo has changed its practices after the report came out two years ago, but I'm not aware of them having done so.
You apparently believe whatever TiVo tells you regarding how its keeps your information private. OK, they might do that, but should TiVo ever experience some serious financial trouble and need a way to make money quick, I don't believe for one second the information they collect won't find its way into the hands of the highest bidder.
And of course they know who you are--the TiVo serial is sent as part of the authentication when the daily calls are made. They know your entire demographic, and I'm sure it's not a huge stretch to go through those logs and calculate how many 18-24-year-olds reviewed the commercial 7:30 into ESPN's Sportscenter.
TiVo might not do this now and they might not in the future, but I sure as hell am going to remain vigilant to make sure it never happens. It's pretty scary as it is. If you want them to have that information, great, but don't expect me to want to volunteer it.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Exactly!
If buying drugs makes you no better than a terrorist...
Then why doesn't resorting to blatantly false propaganda and scare tactics make you any better than a communist?
~GoRK