Your TV May be Watching You

OK, we've been reading about this all over the place and, since we egotistically figure that THG is the only place you get your tech news, we'll proudly report it too. Apparently, interactive TV services like TiVo have the ability to gather information about your viewing habits without your permission. It may not seem like a big deal right now to have your ITV provider know that you never miss an episode of The Simpsons, but as set-top boxes begin to behave more like computers, information could be gathered about everything you do online. One group of companies called the The Online Privacy Alliance includes Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and a bunch of other companies who think that consumers are smart enough to take care of their own privacy issues and that online and ITV industries can self-regulate. However, an article in July/August issue of Mother Jones magazine (that's not a link to the story, but to the magazine's site - the article is currently only available in the print version) sites TiVo as an example of the aforementioned privacy invasion. While telling users that "all of your personal viewing information remains on your receiver in your home," the box comes with data collecting enabled and users have to dig through the documentation to figure out how to turn it off. Other stories on this subject can be found at Newsfactor , and NewsBytes . An interesting report that discusses the situation can be found on the Center for Digital Democracy's site , which seems to have started the hubbub. Wow, and we used to think cookies were the emissaries of the evil empire.