TiVo not the evil empire
Via one of the Volokh’s (they all look the same, you know) comes the headline that: TiVo watchers uneasy after post-Super Bowl reports
AlphaPatriot provided a link to TiVo’s privacy policy that states:
TiVo has no way to access any of your Personally Identifiable Viewing
Information (as defined below) from your TiVo DVR without your prior
consent. Absent your consent, TiVo has no way of knowing what shows you-as
an individual or household- have watched, recorded, or rated with “Thumbs Up”
or “Thumbs Down.”
I’m not scared.
February 6th, 2004 at 4:24 pm
You should be scared, though. The privacy policy is basically saying that they promise not to track your individual stats. But the technology that allows them to gather anonymous stats could very easily be modified to gather individual stats. In fact, it could be that they’re already gathering the individual stats but not using them as such.
All it takes is one hacker…
February 6th, 2004 at 5:12 pm
I don’t know how their systems are architected for sure, but as long as the sytem that retrieves the data from your set is different and can’t talk to the databases that keep customer information it should be fine. It’s certainly quite possible that there are no identifying codes coming out of your tivo that can be traced back to you as a subscriber.