Tivo Tracks Superbowl Viewing Habits 543
ThePretender writes "Sprinkled in the Janet Jackson boob stories is an alarming bit of information: Tivo tracks subscribers' viewing habits. They know how many times the boob was viewed, among other good-to-have (meaning data worth $$) information. Yes, if you agreed to Tivo's privacy policy you knew they could do this, with the promise that you aren't identifiable. Put on the tin foil hats? Or just another way for them to keep your monthly fee down (snicker)." A story from 2002 has more information and makes clear that Tivo does have the capability to record every click you make on the remote control, at all times. Previously Tivo said they tracked 10,000 people for the Super Bowl, this year 20,000.
I'm calling DUPE!... sorta... (Score:5, Insightful)
See, TiVo's had their semi-permeable privacy policy since they started, as documented on
TiVo Data Collection Ramifications [slashdot.org]
TiVo To Sell Customer Data [slashdot.org]
Nielsen to measure TiVo usage [slashdot.org]
So, if this is shocking news to you that TiVo was able to quickly crunch the data and figure out the most rewound moment of the Super Bowl broadcast, you haven't been paying attention. They had this capability for any massively watched program since day one. It was part of the design of the system.
TiVo offers a detailed data service to broadcasters which lets them see by timestamp within an episode what moments people watched, rewound, and skipped. Rumoredly, TechTV's The Screen Savers bought that service once for just one episode, and it ended up proving that their managers where right about what people wanted to see a little more than the actual content-making staff wanted to hear.
The Super Bowl most rewound moment is something TiVo's been doing for years, just for the sake of putting out a press release to get the TiVo name into conversations about what we were gonna be talking about anyway the week after the event... and from Slashdot's coverage over the years, it appears to have worked.
Easy to read between the lines (Score:3, Insightful)
Privacy advocates have decried such technologies as invasive, but TiVo officials say they do not pass along information that would identify individual viewers.
When gathering customer marketing research, TiVo says it does not link viewer data to their name, gender or age -- only into one big database that can identify users by ZIP code.
What's interesting is how the article points out what TiVo does not do. They don't "pass along" information "when gathering customer marketing research".
It's not stated outright, but that sounds like they do record all that information... but it's ok, 'cause they don't use it for marketing purposes.
Which, of course, puts TiVo right up there with the so-called loyalty cards [nocards.org] "privacy" policies. They promise not to resell personal information, but they do gather it, and it's available to anyone who knows a friendly judge.
The bottom line, as usual, is simple. Don't buy anything at Kroger, or watch anything on TiVo, that you wouldn't want [John Ashcroft | your wife's divorce lawyer] to find out about.
By the way, does anyone know if Dish Network's PVR phones home about my rewinding habits?
Re:I'm calling DUPE!... sorta... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if a story comes out that they are making my specific viewing habits to anyone, then that would be news.
It's not a big deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
And you know what?
-DirectTV pay-per-view tracks what I watch...
-My ISP knows what web sites I've requested...
-My credit card company knows what I spend my money on.
-My hospital shares its information with my insurance company, which in turn shares its information with my company. (Because they have to pay their share of the bills)
It's my TV viewing info... I don't care. If anything, if they sell my viewing habits and realize that Firefly and Farscape are more watched than My Big Sweaty Boyfriend... That's a GOOD THING!
Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the extent they could do this is very limited. TiVo units perge this data every time they make a call-in, and once the call is completed TiVo doesn't keep the association between the log file and who sent it unless they have flagged the user's account for support reasons. Also, I know of no real court cases where cops have actually tried to get TiVo data used as evidence...
I LIKE It (Score:5, Insightful)
Crispin, always wanted to be in the Neilson ratings
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
CTO, Immunix Inc. [immunix.com]
much more reliable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
By contrast, if you created a TiVo equivalent from a home computer with a TV tuner card, it would be completely anonymous -- nobody would ever know what you watched unless they had access to your machine.
Re:Easy to read between the lines (Score:3, Insightful)
The TiVo has been hacked, and the information it sends analyzed. According to the hackers no such information is ever sent to TiVo. Or such was the case some time ago when I last heard about it anyway.
as a longtime Tivo owner... (Score:5, Insightful)
OH NO! THEY CAN TELL THAT LOTS OF PEOPLE WATCHED THAT SCENE! DEAR LORD, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
Ummmm
They haven't said that, or anything remotely resembling that. They have said "Tivo users watched this particular segment of the Superbowl more than anything else." So?
Yes, Tivo could do something horrible with my personal information. But then again, Hustler could also publish a big long list of everybody that subscribes to it, complete with home addresses, but they don't. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but at some point we just have to have some level of trust in other people. Tivo has said that my information is kept anonymous, and has given me no reason to doubt their word, so I don't see a big problem with trusting them.
And before you start the "oh-my-god-what-an-idiot-for-trusting-a-big-compa
If you have used a credit card, you must trust every single store at which you have ever swiped your credit card at least as much as I trust Tivo. If you have ever applied for a loan, you've coughed up your bank account information. And you're worried about someone knowing what television shows you're watching?
This could be a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as it's Anonymous it's a "Good Thing" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ANI makes anonymization worthless (Score:1, Insightful)
I connect to the TiVo service through my broadband [tivo.com] connection. I guess even non-idiots can now believe your statement.
Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's possible that if somebody was watching illegal content, the cops could get a warrant, grab the TiVo, and then have a log of every remote click
Exactly what kind of "illegal content" is your TiVo going to be playing? Only that which is broadcasted/streamed to your unit from giant media conglomerates. I fail to see how "8:45pm - Channel 725 - 0:13 minutes - volume_down x 3" is going to help convict anyone of anything? Even if you use your TiVo to control your DVD/VCR, how can button clicks associated with your zip code be used for anything?
Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
First, TiVo says they only track it by zip code. You don't completely have to take them at their word, since it's been analyzed. But the thing is, TiVo changes their "privacy policy" at the drop of a hat. And once they change it, you have no recourse but to agree, or to stop using their "service." And if you do stop using their "service" (which is to say, you stop paying them to not disable the hardware you've already paid for), you don't get any money back, unless you can find someone willing to buy it.
Second, despite what they say, it is more than possible for the data to be correlated to an individual account. Since each box (or, each home in the case of network access and NAT) has a unique IP address, and each box queries the TiVo servers to ensure that the account is still active, and that query gets the account number... well. It's not hard to do the correlation. And my reading of the current "privacy policy" means they can even use this data in this fashion now, since they're not "collecting" it from the boxes.
TiVo has a great product, but the company is morally slimy. And any potential user must keep in mind that, in TiVo's mind, its customers are not the users, but rather the advertisers they sell the data to.
Re:ANI makes anonymization worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
What TiVo provides in an acurate count of what people watch, each within a small segment of an advertised area.
Any finer data is worthless.
TiVo:"hey this address watches Bud Commercials, call budwieser and let them know! this way budwieser can try to sell this ONE houshold beer. Of course since it is so individual, it will cost $5000 a six pack."
Re:Lots of rewind + pause during halftime I'll bet (Score:2, Insightful)
Worried? No (Score:5, Insightful)
I do think that disclosed practices (such as anonymously monitoring for viewing habits) isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm certain that Tivo has found and created new features based on viewing the tracking information.
I also think that Tivo stands a decent chance of displacing Nielsen's as a premier rating service. And as long as it is done anonymously, it is a god send. As I think that Tivo would more accurately reflect "real" viewing habits. (And of course possibly give it a geek edge, so that our favorite programing gets better ratings).
The second Tivo transitions over to a non-anonmous tracking service, is probably the day that their company headquarters will burn down. Outraged geeks will storm the place.
I think Tivo is continuing to walk on the correct side of a very tenuous debate over usability, tracking, and privacy invasion.
The comparison to Microsoft has to be made... If this were Microsoft I wouldn't trust them to track it, as they have a history of repeated violations of their own policies, written and stated. Whereas Tivo does not have that same history, that I am aware of.
Re:MoveOn.org's Boycott (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To all non-TiVO people who didn't see the boobs (Score:3, Insightful)
From the long TV shot, I couldn't make out what was written on his back. It looked like a domain name. Anyone catch it?
Back to Janet's boob- I used my Tivo to fast forward through the entire aweful halftime show and didn't even know about the flash until Monday. When was the last time Janet had a hit song? Like 10 years ago? Brittney and Madonna kiss and get 10 times the publicity that their latest albums have. It's cool that singers like Alicia Keys and Gwen Stephani keep their tongues and boobs to themselves and get attention with thier actual music.
-B
Re:We're not spying on you! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't I care?
1) I want TV exec's to know what I watch, so they keep it on the air.
2) I want Ad exec's to know what I want to buy, and how to make a commercial that captures my interest; I have free will and don't buy things just because Jamie Lee Curtis tells me too.
3) I want Tivo to stay and business, and better yet find a way to make enough to waive my monthly fee, without resorting to being asses about me hacking my Tivo to add a bigger drive, etc.
If it bothers you, grab a set of rabbit ears and disconnect from the grid. If you are upset that there isn't a full screen pop-up every time you push a button that the click has been recorded and may be sent to Tivo during the next phone connection, I don't want to hear it. If you own a Tivo and are just figuring this out, then I gotta feel you really aren't all that concerned about this anyway, or you would have bothered to check why your Tivo wants to call out every night.
Personally, I'd be more concerned about why the cable companies are working hard at getting their boxes installed in your house connected to their two-way network full time. How do you know there isn't a camera inside there?
Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I did have a momentary, "Holy crap! They can track in THAT much detail?" shock, it doesn't really raise my bloodpressure.
Re:Link to video please (Score:3, Insightful)
The copyright notice video is basically a communication of "We are the NFL. We have laywers." aimed at putting a little fear into bar owners who subscribe to Sunday Ticket on a residential account when really they need to be paying the higher commercial rate and such.
Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
When the Nazi argument comes out... (Score:4, Insightful)
Incidentally, the (correct) quote, from the Congressional Record, is:
When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church -- and there was nobody left to be concerned.
-h-
Re:It's not a big deal... (Score:2, Insightful)
'uh oh he watches some wacko news network, orders al franken books, and made a trip to the hobby store... you know what that means... he's a terrorist!'
*Shrug* or something...
e.
Prudish hysteria (Score:3, Insightful)
"[Michaelangelo's David] shows part of the human body which, practical though they may be, are EVIL!"
Sorry for sounding a bit offtopic, but the people that are upset about this to get a life. In a country where it's okay to fry mentally ill people to death, let any eejit carry a gun, consume a huge proportion of the world's resources and invade a country for dubious reasons, exposing a bit of human flesh is greeted with the sort of outrage that you'd think would be reserved for the end of the world.Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mind banner ads on web sites. I occasionaly click through one and have made a purchase. In fact, it I know I'm going to order something from, say, ThinkGeek, I'll hit my favorite site that usually has ThinkGeek banner ads first and try to make the purchase via a click through. The company still got my money and I hopefully helped out the site. I never make purchases from unsoliceted e-mail though, and outright avoid those companies.
If I go to a web site, I expect to see some on topic, non intrusive banner ads, just like I expect commercials on TV. They're more useful for me and the advertiser (and in the long run, the site/show being sponsored) if they're ads I actually need.
I've written a few custome applications for companies that do marketing tracking, customer care card, coupon redemtion sorts of data collection. These people aren't evil. They're just trying to be more effective in their advertising. Most don't want to waste time or money advertising to people who don't/won't purchase. They aren't collecting the fact that I bought shoe polish and a frozen TV dinner at 2am to sell it to big brother, because that's just some wierd ass purchase and I must be a bad person that should be put on a watch list... they do it becuase if they can find out that people who buy X usually buy Y, or that any time Z is on sale for $.75 off, I buy 10 of them, they can better plan their ad campaigns. If they waste less money on marketing, but are just as succesful, in a perfect world, I'm better off as a consumer. In the real world, I remain employed because I sometimes write these applications that companies see a return on, and my 401K does better because these companies turned a proffit.
Re:More Than Superbowl Tit-ilation (Score:1, Insightful)
Nielsen, Schmielsen (Score:2, Insightful)
Investor's Business Daily [investors.com] (body-cavity search required) said on Jan 15, 2004 that "... Nielsen has been tracking TiVo use since August 2002, but it hasn't released any findings publicly."
USAToday is featuring TiVo popularity [prnewswire.com] information in their television listings: "On Wednesday January 28 USA TODAY unveils an enhanced package of television ratings coverage in the LIFE section, including a monthly listing of the Top 10 most rated programs based on an analysis of anonymous, aggregate data from 20,000 TiVo households."
And you can read more about Nielsen partnering with TiVo [wired.com] from a while back.
TiVo reporting aggregate TV viewing habits is no different from cable companies being able to tell what channels you're choosing to watch on your digital cable box, from websites gathering referrer and browser information from visitors, or movie studios talking about what the largest grossing movies were over the weekend.
I welcome TiVo's use of aggregate (*not personalized*) gathering of data for reporting to the networks. With luck, this could result in the networks deciding to keep certain shows that have high record/replay/time-shift value instead of cancelling them because nobody wants to watch those shows exactly when the networks choose to air them. If my TiVo usage can help dictate the types of shows that the networks will (or won't) air, then this is a win for all of us.
Re:We're not spying on you! (Score:1, Insightful)
Why should everything on TV be free? It costs money to make and distribute content, and to make the tivo box itself and the infrastructure behind the service and you think all this should be provided for free?
What is it you do? programmer? sysadmin? plumber?
Will you write me a new OS (which is 100% backwards compatible with my old one, of course), build out my new computer to run it (the hardware wants to be free, also), and then fix the leak under my kitchen sink? (for free of course using your own tools).
Thanks!
Re:Prudish hysteria (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, you do have a right as a parent to make this choice for your family and this incident prevented parents from making that choice.
Re:Tivo should be free.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you go to movies in the theater? Do you see ads before the movie? Do you get in free?
Do you ever go to professional sporting events? Do you see ads everywhere in the stadium? Are tickets free?
Do you have a credit card? Do they send you ads with your monthly bill? Do you also pay them an annual fee (or maybe you don't)? Do you pay when you are late with a payment? Do they charge you interest?
Lots of companies cannot survive on just one revenue stream. If you didn't want them to collect the data, you can call them and opt out of the data collection.
Twostep
Re:Prudish hysteria (Score:2, Insightful)
You seem to agree with the notion that it is conceivable that an individual child is too young to handle the visual and thus the parent should have the choice and that this incident precluded that choice. Why split hairs over which children those are when the granparent post did not specify such? It is likely that an event watched by millions included at least one such child.
Re:Prudish hysteria (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Prudish hysteria (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, you are claiming that there will be a similar outrage even if there was no breast bared. I disagree. I think it would've been business as usual otherwise.
This is exactly about a bared breast.
This is not bad. This is good. (Score:2, Insightful)
If Tivo get ZERO feedback from users (privacy fanatics), they won't have a clue if their stuff is good or not. They NEED feedback. Seems tracking 20,000 over superbowl is a pretty good way of getting it. I mean if they really are recording all those button presses, they'll be able to tell if people are having problems with a particular function. Maybe they are hitting buttons waiting for a menu to update, and in the next iteration of Tivo - bang, no more slow menus...
Some Thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
However, this honestly seems to be one of those moments where Slashdot, as a community or group, becomes somewhat hypocritical. Note: individual posters agreeing with Tivo are not necessarily being hypocritical and this isn't me trying to lecture anyone who does support that company. Please allow me to explain why I think this.
Look at other cases where companies, or even governments, can or do collect anonymous information (or information that is then only handled in an aggregate way) and Slashdot usually cries out against them with the usual tinfoil hat jokes.
RFID tags is one such example. These are inherently benign and don't have much connection with an individual. Say you have a coat with an embedded with a chip which when read says, "CoatCo Coat, black, large" to the reading device. What if a reading device read that each time you walked into a store and that store then showed companies in an effort to get more direct marketing? It is essentially the same thing, as long as anonymity is kept.
"Ah ha!" some might say. "But hooking it up to video-cameras and receipts with my credit card, they can identify me readily." This is all quite true, but you could say the same with Tivo; they could correlate your credit card number, address and telephone number if they wanted to. Obviously, many people would not agree to such an invasion of privacy and Tivo probably would not succeed in doing so, nor am I trying to suggest that Tivo is just waiting for the right moment.
Now, RFID tags are not exactly the same as Tivo watching television habits. One big one is that you choose to watch Tivo, but you may not necessarily be knowingly choosing to have a RFID tag in your merchandise. But I think the comparison is still valid. Too, I find Tivo recording my information somewhat more disturbing than someplace finding out I prefer some type of jacket; in the store I'm in a public place and therefore have a lower expectation of privacy (people can see and recognize my jacket with their eyes), while at home it's somewhat unnerving.
Just to reiterate, Tivo is not "wrong" or "right" in this case. This is a personal issue between customers and a company. I just wanted to point out that perhaps Slashdot as a whole is giving Tivo a little bit of an easy ride. Then again, perhaps they've earned it for seeming (I don't own one) to respond so well to their customers.
TSage
Re:Prudish hysteria (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that clothes are a man-made invention as well? Fact is, being clothed is unnatural, look at every other mammal out there, how many of them wear clothes (not counting the abused cats and dogs that are dressed up by thier owners)?
We have adapted to colder climates by wearing clothes, but somewhere along the way, someone got the bright idea that men shouldn't let thier penis show, and that women shouldn't let either thier vagina or mammaries show. What's the friggin' point? People aren't going to become raving lunatics because they see other people naked, if anything suppressing those sexual urges, the way we do in our society, is going to lead to deviant behavior (catholic priests, anyone?). The worst that is going to happen is that some guys are going to get hard-ons, and some women are going to start to lubricate, and even that will not occur as often, when everyone becomes used to the idea of seeing other naked people.
The only reason people are so obsessed with being clothed is that they are afraid of being judged. Guys are worried that they are too small, and women are worried that they are too fat. So, they hide, and force everyone else to hide, lest they have thier inadaquicies infered by being covered. Add to that the religious idiots who want to portray sex as evil, and you get what we had Monday, people over-reacting to Janet Jackson showing off her breast.
Lastly, assuming that your reference to God is from the Christian mythology, have you even read Genesis? Adam and Eve didn't start out clothed, or even care about it!
Re:Prudish hysteria (Score:3, Insightful)