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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."
Clearly the whole point of the survey was for them to say "Hey advertisers! Look! This technology is a GOOD thing for you, not a BAD thing."
Of course, one of the reasons people watch the Superbowl is FOR the ads. I don't think I've ever watched a single ad when fast-forwarding through Battle-Bots.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
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.
TiVo Watches the Super Bowl... ...and horny geeks watch Britney. :)
Actually, this is a little misleading. While I have no doubt that a large number of people watch the game for the ads, the survey is skewered towards TiVO owners, not the Super Bowl watching population at large. While nowhere near the same of importance, it's the same factor that lead to the "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline (the headline was predicted based on a phone survey, one of the first of it's kind. Since few had telephones, except for the rich, the survey skewered towards their tastes, which was for Dewey.)
Beware typoes.
Tivo owners watch the Super Bowl? But...but...sunlight, outdoors...sports...
I don't know, it doesn't seem right. Shouldn't they be downloading Linux or trying to destroy the WTO or something?
What's this world coming to...
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
I *want* tv companies to know what I like to watch, and advertisers to know that I almost always skip their adverts because they are dull and pointless.
I don't want them to know that the data comes from *me*, but I certainly have no objection to them knowing what is watched so maybe they'll make more programs I like.
This is a *good* thing.
Sig is taking a break!
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"
Just to elaborate on the other responses...
Tivo gave us a VERY detailed message about this... along with a very easy opt-out system. They outlined that the information being collected was purely statistical and would not be linked to an individual user. I thought they handled it well.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
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 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.
I don't want to hear it if you a) don't have a Tivo and b) haven't looked into what exact data they collect.
Privacy people tend to get all spazzy on here, and work everyone else up into a tizzy, and in the case of Tivo, its not even remotely warranted.
This sort of thing is what keeps Tivo going. This is a new market and it takes a long time to start breaking even. I have zero problem with Tivo doing this, if it allows me to continue using their service which, frankly, I can't imagine having to do without.
Tivo has been a company that from day one has been extremely concerned about privacy rights, and open communication with their users. If you spend any time browsing the Tivo forums at http://www.tivocommunity.com you'll see that not only do they have a powerful support presense, they are very open about what they collect, how its analyzed, and how its sold. People in the underground community independantly verified what they were saying.
So, basically, everyone relax. Step away from the keyboard, and go unpause Jerry Springer on the Tivo. That's where the real excitement is, not here.
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?
So who's the plastic surgeon then?
Steve M
Amen. This is the same argument I was going for in this thread.
Apparently, this sort of data collection is OK, because TiVos are 'cool' and PVR technology needs to be fostered. I totally agree that they are, but so is Windows Media Player (IMHO). If it sent filenames back to Microsoft of all streams I watched, but let you opt out of it, the same people defending TiVo would be quite literally foaming at the mouth.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
A. you can opt out of data collection if you want (you did read the manual right?)
B. they don't log 'mr. x has watched the slashdot show' they log 'someone in zipcode 1234 has watched the slashdot show'
Oh, and I just "discovered" the other day that some http servers actually these things called refer logs, that not only log your IP and what page you're visiting but where you came from; in some cases being able to detect search engine keywords used to get to that page. Given the fact that they could call up your ISP and request modem and customer information it's possible that they could do a heck of alot more damage than knowing you're a grown man who still watches teletubbies.
(...but since this is slashdot we'll completely ignore anything factual)
- MbM