Xbox 2. Am i right to be worried?

[tankplanker]

Absolute ****e I'm afraid. Go read your terms and conditions, you only 'have; to have the box plugged in the phone for the first 12 months. Even then you'll only get a letter asking you to plug it back in. The company that subsidises the box in the first place (?1 install?), wants you to have access to their online shopping etc, no viewing details are every downloaded from a box, only the Pay Per View services you have used that month. Misinformation is far more of a problem than these evil corporations that are just trying to provide a better service.

I have read the sky conditons and will quote them here:

[quote="www.sky.com"]
PRIVACY POLICY
"Account Information" Information about your Sky account including your Contact Information and other information relating to your relationship with Sky such as the model and serial numbers for the digital satellite equipment that we have supplied to you, date(s) of installation, Sky products and services ordered, pay-per-view orders, your Sky digital subscription package and billing history. It may include information we have received from you or third parties about you. It does not include any Viewing Information.

"Anonymous Viewing Information" Viewing Information that does not identify you or your household, including the digital satellite services accessed and the channels viewed or recorded through the Sky+ Set Top Box. This information may be stored in the Sky+ Set Top Box or sent to Sky.

"Contact Information" The information that you give to us when ordering your Sky+ Set Top Box and/or Sky+ Service and at other times that identifies you or allows us to contact you. This information will include your name, address, telephone numbers, email address, customer account number, password and credit card or other payment details.

"Personal Viewing Information" Viewing Information that is linked with some of your Account Information (including name, address, telephone number, make, model and serial number(s) of your Sky digital Satellite System, your entitlements under your Sky+ Service) so that you or your household can be identified. This information may be stored in the Sky+ Set Top Box or sent to Sky.


1. By using your Sky+ Set Top Box you accept that:

(b) unless you ask us not to, Contact Information may also be shared with other companies outside the Sky Group, including for sales, marketing and market research relating to products and services. If you would prefer us not to share such information with companies outside the Group please let us know by writing to us at SSSL, Customer Care Department, PO Box 43, Livingston, West Lothian, EH54 7DD.
[Quote]

4. Unless you ask us not to, we may also supply Anonymous Information to third parties to carry out their own advertising or programming research such as advertisers, broadcasters, consumer and market research organisations and film, channel and other entertainment providers.

URL if you want to read it:

http://www.sky.com/skycom/article/0,,90120-1086334,00.html

granted its for a Sky+ box (which is what I have) but unless you can prove me wrong then its going to be the same for Sky boxes as well.

Finally, anonymous information means catagorised by street, as this is the loop hole that the DVLA use to publish their information.

[2 Point]

The first point was that the box does not have to be connected to the phone. Fact. Prove it, sure, I was involved in the CLI monitoring software design and rollout. Do I know the loopholes, sure, I wrote them.

As for the data downloaded from a Sky box, it is only the PPV info. For Sky+ boxes there is more info, but it is just graded by genre, not individual channels. Prove it. again, I was involved in the EDB and Sky+ rollout. Sky does not have the technical infastructure to capture and process this data. Yet.

I not only have access to the technical details of what is possible, but also the raw data.

The legal contract you've quoted is much more comprehensive than the actual service Sky supply. The viewing details stored in the Sky+ box will be used for a future software release to provide automatic favourite program recording by the box, ie you watch loads of porn, it will record porn you haven't watched before, etc.

Don't look inwards all the time, there might be something out there that's worth seeing.

[bungle]

I can completley see where you're coming from and I too agree that it could be a possibilty. But, hey, it was gonna happen sooner or later......and sony need a good arse kicking for a change.

For some reason while reading your intial post I thought of Good Will Hunting when he is offered the job and he just leads from one thing onto another. Don't why I thought I'd tell you that, but I just did........and you just read it.

[YOUWIN]

personally i couldn't give a **** what they do, adverts junk mail, whatever, christ there's more to worry about than **** like this.

A special note to 2 point, whatever you did involving Sky + good on yas, have had it about 5 months and i couldn't live without it now, i don't often even need to watch adverts anymore thx to sky+ hoorah

[acidforblood]

Somewhere along the way the games will be forgotten, depressing stuff.

[Paul3704]

The first point was that the box does not have to be connected to the phone. Fact. Prove it, sure, I was involved in the CLI monitoring software design and rollout. Do I know the loopholes, sure, I wrote them.

I used to work for the marketing department at News International. How do you think i got started on this? A programmer may know the loopholes, but i bet the millions of dimwitted peons who register with Sky for porn and footy don't. On the very early C&W boxes, there was up to a hundred pound fine if you unplugged from the telephone socket. It was stipulated in the contract. Indeed, the times and other papers of the same group (News International) reported it to death. Private Eye jumped on the band wagon and the threat of a fine was dropped. However in 1993, C&W went to court and maintained that the box had to be plugged in the telephone socket at all times to "Maintain program integrity". They won. The box stays connected.

The information i used to sift through to find trends was incredible. It got to a point we knew pretty much everything about our customers as a demographic. We knew exactly when to advertise soft drinks to get the best market. We knew we had to sell the concept of ad splitting to advertisers (two adverts for the same product in a three minute window. The first advert would be a tease or ask a question, the second part would provide the answer). NDA's won't let me say a lot about what we have but it's more than you would ever consider. When we had porn on, we knew how long it took the average, single man to climax.

A lot of people are missing the point on this that I was originally making. Basically the box, be it Sony or Microsoft (I think it's fair we can rule Nintendo out) would begin to monopolise home entertainment, and what we are exposed to as individuals.

Ironically, i saw an advert on TV this evening from BT. If your home alarm is triggered, you get a message or a text on your mobile. How long will it be before you can log onto a PC anywhere and view your home to make sure everythings alright? If people accept it, why not have video calling through your TV. I can hear people getting their "Invasion Of Privacy" speeches ready, but it's already been argued when ordinary phones became widely available in the 30's and 40's. This is merely an evolution of the telephone.

A TV in your house, supplying information you want, taking information from you, and monitoring market trends. It is sinister. And it's been happening for years. No one else find it peculiar that when they are low on money, they get credit card applications and offers of loans through the post?

It's all about selling the product, you know better. The matrix game is uniformly ****, yet it's number one in the charts, simply because the word "Matrix" sells an ideal, and therefore a product. We know this, that's why we didn't buy it. Millions didn't know, and bought it.

Just because I'm a minority of one, doesn't make me wrong, it makes me a minority of one. Not a good statistic in debates though admittedly.

Some of the emails i've received about this hint and suggest at an Orwellian utopia. Some even asking that if Microsoft were Oceania, News International were Eurasia, who would be Eastasia?

[Freddo]

Whats so bad about marketing tailored to us as individuals? the only difference from what we have now is that you are more likely to get adverts you do care about and less likely to get ones that are just a waste of your time.

[Roost]

We've never had the sky box plugged into the phone line as its miles away from the phone socket and i'm not wiring it through tidily for something i'll never use. Never heard nothing off sky about it neither.

[2 Point]

Roost, the detection/monitoring software has only been operational for 6 months, before that Sky just trusted you (!). If your contract is more than 12 months old, or you paid ?100 for install, they don't give a crap, no letter no nothing.

[tankplanker]

The first point was that the box does not have to be connected to the phone. Fact. Prove it, sure, I was involved in the CLI monitoring software design and rollout. Do I know the loopholes, sure, I wrote them.

snip..

Don't look inwards all the time, there might be something out there that's worth seeing.

I knew you worked for Sky in some capacity

Whether they get the information from the phone line or some other means (I assume this is the CLI stuff you are talking about?) your contract still states that they can freely monitor what you watch.

Why is monitoring your viewing bad? I never said it was bad, I just pointed out that Sky had the right to share your viewing data with anybody it pleases, you then said that this wasn't part of your contract, but it is part of the printed copy that you get through the post after your contract has been confirmed - plus it is available on the web.

You forget that companies only come up with new/improved products to increase sales, not to improve the consumers life. If they can get away with selling the same old **** they do.

There is no privacy in the modern age, you are tracked by so many different things, and its all stored on computers. Watch the net for a (bad) take on this if you can't work out why this is a bad thing (tm)