4 ms·

The crazy thing to me is it's so hard as a consumer to know exactly what data they are selling. I wish they had to be transparent about what they were selling.

JohnFen 8y ago
I think it's pretty easy -- they're selling (or selling access to) every piece of data they have access to.
- tazard 8y ago
  But how can you know what exactly they have access to? Simply the channel you are watching, or the height and number of people standing in the room using (for example) something like this: https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/a3aaqp/mit-device-uses-wifi-to-see-through-walls-and-track-your-movements https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/a3aaqp/mit-de...
  - krageon 8y ago
    Assuming that they're going for cheap with a good rate of return, I'd be more inclined to go with "screenshots of whatever you watch and when you watch it". Of course, you can do all sorts of interesting analysis on this (when is this person home, what hours do they probably work, what demographic do they belong in given what they watch and when they watch it, etc). I don't think you need cutting-edge research based stuff to get some seriously creepy invasion of your privacy.
    - tazard 8y ago
      True, I was just trying to point out that as a regular consumer, it's very difficult to know what data they have access to. With a little creativity, they could have access to _a lot_ of data. Much more than most people probably realize.
jbottoms 8y ago
The court transcripts of the Visio provide a snapshot of insight. Visio was selling reduced data without informing consumers that they were being monitored. There is case information on line and I don't recall it exactly, but it was demographic, ethnicity and watching habits. I'm sure that could be extended to recognize room furnishing. In another project Affective sells Emotion As a Service (EAAS) which extracts data from 24 points on the face. A single capture can be decoded as an expression, and expressions across time can be decoded as emotion. That algorithm could be ported to a smart TV though I don't think there have been any announcements yet.

JohnFen 8y ago

I think it's pretty easy -- they're selling (or selling access to) every piece of data they have access to.

tazard 8y ago
But how can you know what exactly they have access to? Simply the channel you are watching, or the height and number of people standing in the room using (for example) something like this: https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/a3aaqp/mit-device-uses-wifi-to-see-through-walls-and-track-your-movements https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/a3aaqp/mit-de...
- krageon 8y ago
  Assuming that they're going for cheap with a good rate of return, I'd be more inclined to go with "screenshots of whatever you watch and when you watch it". Of course, you can do all sorts of interesting analysis on this (when is this person home, what hours do they probably work, what demographic do they belong in given what they watch and when they watch it, etc). I don't think you need cutting-edge research based stuff to get some seriously creepy invasion of your privacy.
  - tazard 8y ago
    True, I was just trying to point out that as a regular consumer, it's very difficult to know what data they have access to. With a little creativity, they could have access to _a lot_ of data. Much more than most people probably realize.

jbottoms 8y ago

The court transcripts of the Visio provide a snapshot of insight. Visio was selling reduced data without informing consumers that they were being monitored. There is case information on line and I don't recall it exactly, but it was demographic, ethnicity and watching habits. I'm sure that could be extended to recognize room furnishing. In another project Affective sells Emotion As a Service (EAAS) which extracts data from 24 points on the face. A single capture can be decoded as an expression, and expressions across time can be decoded as emotion. That algorithm could be ported to a smart TV though I don't think there have been any announcements yet.