Your TV Is Watching You
from the watch-out dept
The topic of whether or not your TiVo is spying on you has been mentioned a few times, but now Salon is running an article worrying about how interactive TV is interactive for advertisers as well, letting them get all sorts of information about who you are, so they can target specific ads to you. While past performance of these types of technologies suggest that they're not very good at learning about you (and often make very bad assumptions), it does present some interesting (and potentially scary) scenarios. At the end of the article, one person suggests that politicians would love to be able to send a different message to every TV viewer, depending on what they're interested in. The article also mentions some new technologies being designed for TiVo-like devices to stop you from skipping commercials. These include things like pretending to skip the commercial, but really dropping you off 5 seconds before the commercial ends when the brand name and/or logo is likely to be displayed. Another move is to "replace" the fast-forwarded commercial with a much shorter commercial for the same product. And, of course, the ever-popular "this commercial cannot be fast-forwarded" feature is gaining populartiy with advertisers - despite the fact that it's guaranteed to piss off anyone who encounters it.
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Cable TV is watching too...
I was an engineer at a set top box manufacturer in the mid-80's. Even back then, our cable boxes could record which box IDs were watching which channels and when. At the time, this was only used to target advertising to specific neighborhoods but, if someone at the cable company wanted to, they could tie this ID to your personal viewing habits.
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