TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: TiVo Sees if You Skip Those Ads

Re: TiVo Sees if You Skip Those Ads

ranck@vt.edu
Tue, 6 Feb 2007 22:07:21 UTC

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> wrote:

> by David Lazarus

> This raises a pair of troubling questions: Is TiVo, which
> revolutionized TV viewing with its digital video recording technology,
> now watching what people watch? And is it selling that sensitive info
> to advertisers and others?

I believe this was always in thier business plan, and publicly
admitted by TiVo from day one. They have said they are gathering
aggragate data, not personally identifiable. They have certainly
always *claimed* to not be gathering subscriber specific info.

In other words, they can say 60% of their users skip the latest Ford
commercial (or whatever) but not if Joe Blow of 123 Street Rd. was
one of those skippers. I believe last year TiVo revealed that some
percentage of their users were replaying the commercials during the
Superbowl, and which commercials were most replayed.

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.

Post Followup Article Use your browser's quoting feature to quote article into reply
Go to Next message: Wesrock@aol.com: "Re: 712 858 8094?"
Go to Previous message: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com: "Re: Criminals Are Overwhelming the Web"
May be in reply to: Monty Solomon: "TiVo Sees if You Skip Those Ads"
TELECOM Digest: Home Page