TiVo sees if you skip those ads

TIVO SEES IF YOU SKIP THOSE ADS
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: David Lazarus]
[Commentary] TiVo revealed the other day that it's offering TV networks and ad agencies a chance to receive second-by-second data about which programs the company's 4.5 million subscribers are watching and, more importantly, which commercials people are skipping. 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? The answers, apparently, are no and no. "I promise with my hand on a Bible that your data is not being archived and sold," said Todd Juenger, TiVo's vice president and general manager of audience research and measurement. "We don't know what any particular person is watching," he said. "We only know what a random, anonymous sampling of our user base is watching." Still, privacy advocates say TiVo's new data service -- dubbed StopWatch -- reflects the growing ease with which companies could, if they so choose, collect and exploit vast amounts of information about consumers' everyday habits.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/02/04/BUGJ8NTRT91.DTL&type=business