Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: WebTV
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 19:19:57 -0400
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 98 09:13 PDT From: lauren () vortex com (Lauren Weinstein) To: farber () central cis upenn edu Subject: WebTV Cc: lauren () vortex com Hi Dave. Thanks for your kind words regarding the most recent PRIVACY Forum Digest. I assume you saw yesterday's reports where WebTV's President "announced" that they've apparently been using hidden mechanisms within the WebTV system to backchannel user web browsing and television viewing data back to WebTV, then providing aggregate info (down to zip code granularity, apparently) to advertisers. Supposedly the plan is to "improve" that granularity down to individual users so that specific ads can be targeted to specific persons, though they've suggested there will be an opt-out feature for that. Obviously, all of the concerns that I've expressed over Netscape's "What's Related" backchannels applies to Microsoft's WebTV as well. In fact WebTV, while it involves far fewer users right now, apparently goes a couple of steps further by actually providing data to advertisers, and by also tracking TV viewing habits. This could become a very, very big issue as next generation digital cable TV boxes are deployed on a large scale, many of which will contain Windows CE / WebTV. It's clear that firms are using whatever technology they can muster to monitor the activities of their users, with little thought to the privacy implications. The WebTV announcement was done with a very positive spin, emphasizing how wonderful their monitoring of users was to improve the delivery of interesting advertising. There has been speculation that perhaps the announcement was triggered by my recent PRIVACY Forum reports on Netscape, as someone at WebTV decided that they'd be better off doing as benign an announcement on this issue as possible before an "expose" appeared. I obviously can't judge if this is true, but the timing is certainly interesting. Feel free to pass this message along if you wish. Thanks. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein Moderator, PRIVACY Forum http://www.vortex.com
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- IP: WebTV Dave Farber (Oct 13)