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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."
I don't even have to go to my Tivo to do that. You're posting like you assume I haven't done that before. Backdoors were cool when they first were found two years ago, but they pretty much bring yawns now.
So you want me to go see whats in my log files. Since I'm at work, I can't play with the silly backdoors, but since I know a pretty fair amount about how the Tivo works, I have two options available to me. One, I can log into my Tivo over the web and look at the reports there. Or I can look through the entire MFS database on the Tivo for anything I find suspect. But I've done that before and it got old too. Have you? I'm guessing not, since you seemed so excited about the backdoors.
So that aside, my other option is to just ssh into my Tivo. Easy enough, and I can go and just ftp off the syslog. But you know what? I was doing that a year and a half ago too, and it just isn't that interesting either. I know perfectly well what data gets sent up to Tivo. I know perfectly well that the serial number is used via HTTP basic authentication before data is uploaded or downloaded from Tivo. I also know perfectly well that they have said they do not correlate data with users, and I believe them because in two years I've never had a reason not to, and I've dealt pretty directly with Tivo. I also know that Tivo doesn't have the right information to really find out anything useful about me anyway, since they don't know what was on a channel at a given time anyway!. Want to know what else I know? Having worked with a number of companies in the past that write software for data mining demographic data sources, I can tell you for absolutely certain that the Tivo information isn't within two or three orders of magnitude as damaging to your privacy as the data collected when you go shopping and pay for anything with any tender other than cash. And walk there because you don't have a drivers license or car. And don't own or rent property.
Get real. I can't say you're being paranoid, but you're looking at the world with blinders... things are a whole lot worse than you think, and a whole lot more out of your ability to control than you think. Going after Tivo for what they are doing is just plain silly.
The problem isn't superbowl ads or Britney Spears videos or even your favorite XXX flick. It's that if this information is collected at all, it can be used against you. Insurance agencies could use viewing habits to put you into new risk categories, and overzealous DA's and policemen could use it to pressure you into making a deal or to make you look bad in front of a jury. What's particularly bad about that is that you, as an individual, don't even know what criteria are being used to determine that you are suspicious or a risk.