• San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, February 5, 2007 11:30 AM

News that TiVo is offering networks and agencies second-by-second data about which programs the company's subscribers are watching -- and which ads they are skipping -- raises some troubling questions. For example, is TiVo now watching what people watch and then selling that information to third parties? Apparently not.

"I promise with my hand on a Bible that your data is not being archived and sold," says 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."

However, privacy advocates note that the new data service shows just how easily companies could gather vast amounts of information about our everyday habits. "It's a constant struggle to maintain your privacy in the modern era," says Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney at San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have entered an era in which more and more information about you is being collected and maintained."

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