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Awesome. Note that this isn't merely a fine, but also comes with the stipulation that they "prominently disclose and obtain affirmative express consent for its

Awesome. Note that this isn't merely a fine, but also comes with the stipulation that they "prominently disclose and obtain affirmative express consent for its data collection and sharing practices, and prohibits misrepresentations about the privacy, security, or confidentiality of consumer information they collect". And they need to destroy the data collected before March, last year. That's pretty good! At the very least, this will make it so people are more aware of the constant telemetry. Some find that sort of feature useful, and others find it chilling, but at least this is a step in the direction of making it obvious.

ysavir 10y ago
Sure, they can destroy their data, but everything shared with those 3rd parties is still at those third parties. It's not exactly accomplishing much.
- bsilvereagle 10y ago
  If Visio made complete backups (say full HDD clones) of all their computers on a weekly basis, do all of the backups need destroyed? Is it feasible to open every backup and delete the relevant information? Is it possible to "forget" that a backup process exists and still maintain the data?
  - derefr 10y ago
    I've always wondered whether a datastore built on an immutable architecture could be designed to cope with an expectation of receiving court orders to delete data. I think you'd arrive at a somewhat "DRM"-like design. That is: 1. the datastore system would be designed as an "appliance", intended to be installed directly on hardware, and would mandate (and check that) the hardware it was installed on provided both a TPM to store disk encryption keys in, and a full Secure Boot trust-chain granting only its bootloader boot privilege; 2. the datastore software would maintain a mutable index within the store (in the Merkle-tree-ref sense) of all data that is to be "considered deleted"—a master "tombstone" record, in the DBMS terminology—and would prevent anyone from accessing said data through the system's API. With such a design, the data is effectively "gone", just as if it was really erased from the disks; the only way for a company running such a datastore to "recover" the data would be to find an exploit in the appliance allowing them to modify either the tombstone list (somewhat easy to thwart by choice of data structure), or the code that applies the tombstone policy.
    - kpil 10y ago
      It's like every service providers wet dream to arbitrarily lock up our private files. Currently only the russian cybercriminals are a bit ahead of the competition.
    - detaro 10y ago
      In addition: Have per-object encryption keys and destroy those when data has to be wiped.
    - daurnimator 10y ago
      Have a look at what datomic does. http://docs.datomic.com/excision.html http://docs.datomic.com/excision.html
  - x0x0 10y ago
    That's unimportant. What is important is legal penalties for accessing or selling that data. No-one with assets and in-house counsel would dare violate an order like this.
- porpoisemonkey 10y ago
  > Sure, they can destroy their data, but everything shared with those 3rd parties is still at those third parties. Agreed. I think it would be more effective deterrent if VIZIO had to work with those third parties to locate and delete the material that was transferred to them. This 1) would nullify the contract between VIZIO and those parties forcing VIZIO into back payment and 2) create an annoyance for the third-parties, hopefully making them think to ask how any data they're purchasing is being collected. At a minimum I think that customers whose data was collected prior to March 2016 have a right to know which third-party companies purchased their information.
  - ysavir 10y ago
    As one of those customers, I definitely think so!
  - PirateDave 10y ago
    In California, there is the "Shine the Light" law [0] that requires a company to release third-party information to a consumer if there is identifiable information given to third-parties along with the data collected. So in this case, Vizio would be required (at least to California natives) to release those third-parties' names and associated data collected from you. [0] http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV&sectionNum=1798.83 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....
    - porpoisemonkey 10y ago
      Thanks for the additional information. This is a step in the right direction but it's unfortunate that the obligation to disclose appears to be opt-in and not opt-out as detailed in paragraph (a). > that business shall, after the receipt of a written or electronic mail request, or, if the business chooses to receive requests by toll-free telephone or facsimile numbers, a telephone or facsimile request from the customer, provide all of the following information to the customer free of charge To compile a list of all companies that have their personal information an user would have to identify every business they have a business relationship with that could possibly be gathering this information and then send a written request to each on a regular basis as the request is only valid for information disclosed in the proceeding year. It seems then that this law only really covers consumers in the event that they find one specific and recent instance where they'd like this information disclosed.
- x0x0 10y ago
  This may or may not help you, but it's typical in these sort of data deals to (1) mostly sell aggregate data (eg these demographics actually watch these shows / actually saw these commercials). You'd probably be more interested in the latter in order to connect commercials with purchasing habits, but you're going to operate at the zip code or grocery store level. (2) If you are selling individual records, make up identifiers and not tie to IP addresses. Both because of privacy concerns and to force your ad-vendor customers to continue to purchase the dataset. (3) from the perspective of someone in the ad industry, I don't buy 11m cookies for ad targeting. These data deals require custom programming on both sides, time from bizdev at both vizio and ad companies, and for ad-company sales to be instructed and helped to sell to their customers. So unless Vizio tv viewing data has pretty high reach, I'm just not interested. I can't really see someone interested in 11m cookies unless that data is integrated with all available tv viewing data from Vizio, Netflix, Samsung, set-top boxes, etc. I'm aware of some pieces of that being sold, but not all of them. (3a) also, from the in-industry perspective, household data is often not that helpful. You're going to get demographics, if you get them, from the person in that household that happens to pay the bills. That's often unrelated to the person that spends time consuming media. So if eg parent X pays the bills in that household, but kids or parent Y spend the most time watching tv, this data is nowhere near as helpful for ad targeting as you would think.
- samstave 10y ago
  So, I worked there along with the others who are all HN regulars. I cant comment on this fine at all, but I can comment on the reaction: The system for identifying an individual via their digital habits is advanced and (in internet terms) ancient. The credit card industry, for example, is way more an invasion of your privacy than what are effectively Neilsen Ratings on steroids... so I think people over react to this. The fact is, that if you look at netflix, they have way more specific viewing habit info than any random TV which can state what it is watching. They already have their customer info, demographics, if they have kids, if they have account leechers like a brother or a friend who maintains a profile. They can see what IP/Device/app install anything is coming from -- and they have agreements with various device manufacturers to NOT track their (Netflix's) viewership/app use etc... Netflix is probably the most savvy digital media company at this point. While this data will enrich various entities over time at the expense of 100% privacy as to the content one is viewing, I would state that one would be better served to be worried about their chrome and credit card history than the viewing of particular TV shows. Additionally - having a very intimate knowledge of how the vizio system works, I would not be concerned about this at all in the scheme of things as truly, its literally impossible to have a system watching all media streams on TVs throughout the world. Finally, Vizio has done a stand-up job of enforcing opt-in/opt-out in the actual firmware of every set.
  - sib 10y ago
    While Netflix does have a lot of data about what you watch on Netflix, I believe that the reason people react so strongly to things like this is that, as the platform provider, using automated content recognition and other techniques, Vizio (or Samsung, ...) can know everything that you watch across all sources flowing through the TV. Even including things such as YouTube, linear broadcast TV, etc. That's a lot broader surface area than Netflix has...
    - knappe 10y ago
      That and they weren't exactly upfront about their collection.
    - samstave 10y ago

ysavir 10y ago

Sure, they can destroy their data, but everything shared with those 3rd parties is still at those third parties. It's not exactly accomplishing much.

bsilvereagle 10y ago
If Visio made complete backups (say full HDD clones) of all their computers on a weekly basis, do all of the backups need destroyed? Is it feasible to open every backup and delete the relevant information? Is it possible to "forget" that a backup process exists and still maintain the data?
- derefr 10y ago
  I've always wondered whether a datastore built on an immutable architecture could be designed to cope with an expectation of receiving court orders to delete data. I think you'd arrive at a somewhat "DRM"-like design. That is: 1. the datastore system would be designed as an "appliance", intended to be installed directly on hardware, and would mandate (and check that) the hardware it was installed on provided both a TPM to store disk encryption keys in, and a full Secure Boot trust-chain granting only its bootloader boot privilege; 2. the datastore software would maintain a mutable index within the store (in the Merkle-tree-ref sense) of all data that is to be "considered deleted"—a master "tombstone" record, in the DBMS terminology—and would prevent anyone from accessing said data through the system's API. With such a design, the data is effectively "gone", just as if it was really erased from the disks; the only way for a company running such a datastore to "recover" the data would be to find an exploit in the appliance allowing them to modify either the tombstone list (somewhat easy to thwart by choice of data structure), or the code that applies the tombstone policy.
  - kpil 10y ago
    It's like every service providers wet dream to arbitrarily lock up our private files. Currently only the russian cybercriminals are a bit ahead of the competition.
  - detaro 10y ago
    In addition: Have per-object encryption keys and destroy those when data has to be wiped.
  - daurnimator 10y ago
    Have a look at what datomic does. http://docs.datomic.com/excision.html http://docs.datomic.com/excision.html
- x0x0 10y ago
  That's unimportant. What is important is legal penalties for accessing or selling that data. No-one with assets and in-house counsel would dare violate an order like this.
porpoisemonkey 10y ago
> Sure, they can destroy their data, but everything shared with those 3rd parties is still at those third parties. Agreed. I think it would be more effective deterrent if VIZIO had to work with those third parties to locate and delete the material that was transferred to them. This 1) would nullify the contract between VIZIO and those parties forcing VIZIO into back payment and 2) create an annoyance for the third-parties, hopefully making them think to ask how any data they're purchasing is being collected. At a minimum I think that customers whose data was collected prior to March 2016 have a right to know which third-party companies purchased their information.
- ysavir 10y ago
  As one of those customers, I definitely think so!
- PirateDave 10y ago
  In California, there is the "Shine the Light" law [0] that requires a company to release third-party information to a consumer if there is identifiable information given to third-parties along with the data collected. So in this case, Vizio would be required (at least to California natives) to release those third-parties' names and associated data collected from you. [0] http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV&sectionNum=1798.83 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....
  - porpoisemonkey 10y ago
    Thanks for the additional information. This is a step in the right direction but it's unfortunate that the obligation to disclose appears to be opt-in and not opt-out as detailed in paragraph (a). > that business shall, after the receipt of a written or electronic mail request, or, if the business chooses to receive requests by toll-free telephone or facsimile numbers, a telephone or facsimile request from the customer, provide all of the following information to the customer free of charge To compile a list of all companies that have their personal information an user would have to identify every business they have a business relationship with that could possibly be gathering this information and then send a written request to each on a regular basis as the request is only valid for information disclosed in the proceeding year. It seems then that this law only really covers consumers in the event that they find one specific and recent instance where they'd like this information disclosed.
x0x0 10y ago
This may or may not help you, but it's typical in these sort of data deals to (1) mostly sell aggregate data (eg these demographics actually watch these shows / actually saw these commercials). You'd probably be more interested in the latter in order to connect commercials with purchasing habits, but you're going to operate at the zip code or grocery store level. (2) If you are selling individual records, make up identifiers and not tie to IP addresses. Both because of privacy concerns and to force your ad-vendor customers to continue to purchase the dataset. (3) from the perspective of someone in the ad industry, I don't buy 11m cookies for ad targeting. These data deals require custom programming on both sides, time from bizdev at both vizio and ad companies, and for ad-company sales to be instructed and helped to sell to their customers. So unless Vizio tv viewing data has pretty high reach, I'm just not interested. I can't really see someone interested in 11m cookies unless that data is integrated with all available tv viewing data from Vizio, Netflix, Samsung, set-top boxes, etc. I'm aware of some pieces of that being sold, but not all of them. (3a) also, from the in-industry perspective, household data is often not that helpful. You're going to get demographics, if you get them, from the person in that household that happens to pay the bills. That's often unrelated to the person that spends time consuming media. So if eg parent X pays the bills in that household, but kids or parent Y spend the most time watching tv, this data is nowhere near as helpful for ad targeting as you would think.
samstave 10y ago
So, I worked there along with the others who are all HN regulars. I cant comment on this fine at all, but I can comment on the reaction: The system for identifying an individual via their digital habits is advanced and (in internet terms) ancient. The credit card industry, for example, is way more an invasion of your privacy than what are effectively Neilsen Ratings on steroids... so I think people over react to this. The fact is, that if you look at netflix, they have way more specific viewing habit info than any random TV which can state what it is watching. They already have their customer info, demographics, if they have kids, if they have account leechers like a brother or a friend who maintains a profile. They can see what IP/Device/app install anything is coming from -- and they have agreements with various device manufacturers to NOT track their (Netflix's) viewership/app use etc... Netflix is probably the most savvy digital media company at this point. While this data will enrich various entities over time at the expense of 100% privacy as to the content one is viewing, I would state that one would be better served to be worried about their chrome and credit card history than the viewing of particular TV shows. Additionally - having a very intimate knowledge of how the vizio system works, I would not be concerned about this at all in the scheme of things as truly, its literally impossible to have a system watching all media streams on TVs throughout the world. Finally, Vizio has done a stand-up job of enforcing opt-in/opt-out in the actual firmware of every set.
- sib 10y ago
  While Netflix does have a lot of data about what you watch on Netflix, I believe that the reason people react so strongly to things like this is that, as the platform provider, using automated content recognition and other techniques, Vizio (or Samsung, ...) can know everything that you watch across all sources flowing through the TV. Even including things such as YouTube, linear broadcast TV, etc. That's a lot broader surface area than Netflix has...
  - knappe 10y ago
    That and they weren't exactly upfront about their collection.
  - samstave 10y ago