{"id":25288,"date":"2014-11-01T17:02:52","date_gmt":"2014-11-01T21:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=25288"},"modified":"2014-11-01T17:02:52","modified_gmt":"2014-11-01T21:02:52","slug":"data-collection-is-creepy-even-when-its-mainly-data-hoarding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/11\/01\/data-collection-is-creepy-even-when-its-mainly-data-hoarding\/","title":{"rendered":"Data collection is creepy, even when its mainly data hoarding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cI\u2019m Terrified of My New TV<\/a>,\u201d Michael Price writes, describing some truly creepy data collection features in his new \u201csmart\u201d television set. Price is right to be scared of the capabilities such devices make possible.<\/p>\n

\n

The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how, and for how long you use the TV. It sets tracking cookies and beacons designed to detect \u201cwhen you have viewed particular content or a particular email message.\u201d It records \u201cthe apps you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content.\u201d It ignores \u201cdo-not-track\u201d requests as a considered matter of policy.<\/p>\n

It also has a built-in camera \u2014 with facial recognition. The purpose is to provide \u201cgesture control\u201d for the TV and enable you to log in to a personalized account using your face. On the upside, the images are saved on the TV instead of uploaded to a corporate server. On the downside, the Internet connection makes the whole TV vulnerable to hackers who have demonstrated the ability to take complete control of the machine.<\/p>\n

More troubling is the microphone. The TV boasts a \u201cvoice recognition\u201d feature that allows viewers to control the screen with voice commands. But the service comes with a rather ominous warning: \u201cPlease be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.\u201d Got that? Don\u2019t say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV.<\/p>\n

You may not be watching, but the telescreen is listening.<\/p>\n

I do not doubt that this data is important to providing customized content and convenience, but it is also incredibly personal, constitutionally protected information that should not be for sale to advertisers and should require a warrant for law enforcement to access.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: this creepily \u201csmart\u201d TV may collect all of that data, but it doesn\u2019t seem to be any good at making any use of it. It barely seems interested<\/em> in making use of it. It doesn\u2019t show much sign of more convenient \u201ccustomized content,\u201d but neither does it show much sign of attempts to monetize this data by selling it to advertisers.<\/p>\n

I have a Comcast \u201cbundle\u201d \u2014 slow and expensive American \u201cbroadband<\/a>,\u201d cable TV, and a landline (with no phone plugged into it \u2014 I don\u2019t even know the number). In theory, Comcast could have an incredibly detailed demographic dossier on our household.<\/p>\n

\"NotMe\"<\/a>
I do not own a motorcycle. Geico and Comcast have collected more than enough data to know that. And yet Comcast is still selling Geico ad time in which Geico attempts to sell me insurance for the motorcycle it knows I don\u2019t have. Geico is still trying to sell Edward Snowden motorcycle insurance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But when it comes to mining that data for any apparent purpose, they don\u2019t even seem to have a grasp on the basic geography they could learn from our billing address. We get ads for political candidates in other states<\/em> and for restaurant chains that don\u2019t have any franchises in our region. We get ads for diapers and baby care products. And Comcast sends its subscribers\u00a0an endless stream of ads\u00a0urging them\u00a0to switch to Comcast.<\/em><\/p>\n

The \u2018vixen likes to put on\u00a0Bizarre Foods<\/em> when she\u2019s working around the house. If she\u2019s working on a project, then Andrew Zimmern is probably eating something unusual or unpleasant in the background. Somewhere, a series of zeroes and ones on a server \u201cknows\u201d this. But no one seems interested or capable of trying to leverage that information in any way. We still get the same ads, content and service as any Comcast cable customer who never<\/em> watches the Travel Channel.<\/p>\n

Think of\u00a0the steady stream of insurance company ads begging us to trade our personal data for a potentially money-saving quote. They\u2019re desperate to collect a fraction of the demographic data on us that Comcast already possesses and ignores.\u00a0Yet, like Comcast, they seem committed to indiscriminate marketing of all of their goods and services to everyone, everywhere, without any interest in which people that data suggests might be more or less receptive to their pitch.<\/p>\n

Geico and Progressive are competing fiercely to sell me motorcycle insurance. Comcast carries their motorcycle insurance ads and channels them into our home. All three companies already have more than enough data collected that they ought to know we don\u2019t own a motorcycle. The local supermarket chain does a better job leveraging\u00a0the data it collects through my \u201cBonus Card\u201d than any of these larger companies do.<\/p>\n

I spent 10 years as an online copy editor for America\u2019s biggest newspaper chain. It was hugely frustrating to me that the newspaper site wasn\u2019t anywhere near as dynamic and responsive as, say, Amazon or Netflix. Visit Amazon a dozen times and the site changes \u2014 adapting to your preferences based on those prior visits. But if you visit your newspaper site every day, going directly to the baseball scores, or the prep sports, or the crime page, that site will never learn and adjust. The Phillies fan who goes to the site every day for Phillies news will see exactly the same home page as the old guy who goes to the site every day to read the obituaries. The two readers will also see exactly the same advertisements on the website. The site records all of their patterns, but it does nothing with that information.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s annoying for the reader \u2014 it\u2019s the inconvenience<\/em> of uncustomized content. But it\u2019s also a big-time money-loser for online journalism because uncustomized, untargeted advertising isn\u2019t as lucrative as more focused, targeted advertising could be.<\/p>\n

Consider\u00a0my former employer, Gannett, which has newspapers in nearly every local market in America. Ten years ago \u2014 back when Gannett was still a semi-credible news-gathering company that hadn\u2019t yet laid off way too many reporters \u2014 those newspapers all had education reporters producing a steady stream of news about local schools. In theory, that means Gannett had a database of parents with children \u2014 one that could be organized by zip code and by a rough estimate of the children\u2019s age. That information would have been regarded as valuable for countless potential advertisers, but Gannett never did anything with it. Go to any local Gannett paper website and click on any story about schools or education. You won\u2019t see ads accompanying that article that have anything to do with parents, education, children, etc. You\u2019ll just see the same indiscriminate, untargeted ads you see all over the Internet \u2014 clickbait photo galleries of celebrity plastic surgery, weight loss scams, a lizard who wants to sell you motorcycle insurance, etc.<\/p>\n

I appreciate Michael Price\u2019s fears and caution. The amount of intensely personal information that is, in theory, being collected about all of us \u2014 on the Web, by our TV sets and cable boxes, etc. \u2014 really is disturbing. It\u2019s not hard to imagine a thousand different nefarious scenarios for how such information could be put to shady, intrusive use. But such schemes\u00a0would require not just greed and\/or malice, but also an accompanying level of competence that Big Data hasn\u2019t yet demonstrated. Price\u2019s point\u00a0about vulnerability to hackers is probably what scares me most, because so far data thieves have shown far more competence than data hoarders have when it comes to putting that information to use.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m certainly not saying\u00a0we should be passive and unconcerned about the huge amount of data about us now being hoarded by a host of hosts and I don\u2019t mean to dismiss or diminish those concerns. Our right to privacy needs to be defended by tangible legal means, not just by the incompetence and indifference of companies like Comcast. But still, we should bear in mind that\u00a0a \u201csmart TV\u201d is only as smart as the people exploiting it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In theory, Comcast could have an incredibly detailed demographic dossier on our household. But when it comes to mining that data for any apparent purpose, they don’t even seem to have a grasp on the basic geography they could learn from our billing address. We get ads for political candidates in other states and for restaurant chains that don’t have any franchises in our region. We get ads for diapers and baby care products and motorcycle insurance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-25288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","tag-greed"],"yoast_head":"\nData collection is creepy, even when its mainly data hoarding<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In theory, Comcast could have an incredibly detailed demographic dossier on our household. But when it comes to mining that data for any apparent purpose, they don't even seem to have a grasp on the basic geography they could learn from our billing address. We get ads for political candidates in other states and for restaurant chains that don't have any franchises in our region. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. 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