TiVo To Sell Customer Data

camusflage writes "Yahoo has a story that details TiVo's plans to sell customer data to advertisers and broadcasters. While individuals will be anonymous, data will be made available in aggregate form, including ZIP code. The San Jose Mercury News has additional coverage on the news."

Comments

Not a big deal.

[brooks_talley]

Am I the only one who thinks that the extreme "privacy" fringe is doing a lot to discredit legitimate privacy concerns.

I care if Tivo sells a list of the programs to watch to a local advertiser who will then call me on the phone, bang on my door, or spam me with "special offers just for me." Tivo, in that case, is attempting to act as a middleman in setting up a business relationship that I have no interest in.

I do not care if Tivo sells data about how many people in California, or even my ZIP code, watched Buffy last night.

Now, there are issues with privacy policies; if Tivo has said that they wouldn't do this and then have, they've lied to their customers, and even the most paranoid privacy freak has a right to expect companies to live up their word.

But really, there are enough *very* significant privacy issues today that relate to *government* spying on *individuals* with no probably cause, warrant, etc.

I'm not at all sure that groups, such as "everyone who lives in my ZIP code" are, or should be, entitled to the same level of privacy protection that individuals deserve.

I mean, if I go down to the street corner and count how many people push the "push to cross" button and then sell that data to the people who make "push to cross" buttons, am I somehow violating peoples' privacy? If I do it in 10 cities? 100? Does it matter if I'm incorporated and have employees or not?

I'm willing to hear the other side, and I certainly subscribe to the slippery-slope argument, but for the most part I think this kind of corporate aggregation of data is at most a very minor concern in a world filled with huge privacy issues.

Cheers
-b

Cool with me.

[Schezar]

I want the ad moguls and networks to know what I watch, because they might just notice that my viewing habits, like those of many people, are nothing like what they believe them to be.

I don't watch ads. Period. I watch a few good shows, and I ignore the rest.

On a larger scale, my dream would be for the entire system of free-but-with-forced-ad-watching television to fall to pieces. Sure, it might mean the end of television as mass-media, but it would also force a lot of mouth-breathers to do something other than watch TV every night.

Of course, I'm pretty tired right now, so make what you will of the preceding. ^_~

Exactly right.

[BoomerSooner]

HIPAA laws even allow for this. I work in long term care and we group data by regions. We just remove all identifiable data.

This allows us to do trending and catch things that would otherwise be impossible.

Trending is good when it's aggregate data. When the book police come to your door it's bad.

I'm tired of this

[Palshife]

Read the privacy policy. It's been around since TiVo was founded, and nothing in that time has changed.

TiVo has been selling your demographic data for years. Superbowl advertisers bought information from TiVo to see which Brittney Spears commercial got the most replay and in which kinds of households.

This has absolutely nothing to do with an infrigement of rights, as it all strictly adheres to an agreement between customer and provider made fully clear at the time of purchase.

To offset the costs of building and maintaining a complicated system that provides an excellent service to consumers they sell information on their demographics. Anyone wanna tell me how that makes them evil all of a sudden?

Re:Focused Advertising

[SuperQ]

What I'd like to see is for there to be an option in the tivo ad item (main screen) to thumb-down an ad I don't like, or don't even want to watch..

Re:Good for us

[PD]

Mod that up. I hope that TiVo sells its data, because then some people who lack cluesticks might suddenly get one. I want TV execs to know that I watch shows like Babylon 5, Star Trek, stuff on TechTV, and so on. But so far, most of what they give us is "The Golden Girls" in a thousand different variants. Anything that lets someone know what I personally watch is a good thing.

stick it to the Nielsens...

[The Lynxpro]

Actually, TiVo reporting the aggregate viewing statistics was a *compelling feature* of the service to me. I HATE (repeat after me, HATE) the Nielsen's. I do not believe 6,000 homes accurately reflects the television viewership of this nation, especially when it depends on those people sitting down and logging their viewing experience in a journal. There have been far too many good television shows cancelled because the Nielsen "families" didn't watch it or chose to record it on their VCRs. There are 700,000 + TiVo subscribers versus 6,000 Nielsen homes. You tell me which one will have better statistics. Even if the Nielsens actually represent a larger overall base of the American market, the TiVo subscribers will actually represent the groups advertisers want to reach anyway (tech savvy Gen X and Gen Y, and babyboomers with money). Now if I could just do a total "thumbs down" to all of Cal Worthington's ads I'd be a happy camper...