This shouldn't be news to anyone because the whole point of Boxee -the very reason it existed to begin with- was to integrate social media concepts into a HTPC. The Boxee devs have been very clear about that - in fact it was central to their advertising back when they first launched.
If Boxee had been secretive about this or even added such features post-launch, then I might understand the authors rant a little more. But complaining that a social-optimized HTPC leaks data is a bit like complaining that Facebook shouldn't be used to back up private photos when it's quite clear that people intentionally use Facebook to share their pictures.
And for what it's worth, the social media stuff in Boxee was actually quite nice (I've not used it since the beta - so I can't comment on how it performs now). I could watch some stuff on YouTube and then recommend it to my friends and visa versa. It worked like a more convenient word of mouth (ie "Hey Bob, I saw this documentary about the territorial habits of cats and I know you like cats so you might want to check it out". I could just switch on my HTPC when I was in the mood for some TV and there would be my friends recommendations). It's just a pity the UI looked like a competition between drunk people to invent the most gaudy interface known to man.
At the time that post was written, their privacy policy never stated that they collect this information. It seems to have been updated since to say that they do in fact collect this information, but they don't offer any insight into how long they store it for. Their privacy policy now states:
"We collect and store information regarding your use of
the Boxee Platform, including (i) the content viewed,
(ii) the time and date of each viewing, (iii) the
application used in viewing the content and (iv) IP
addresses, including internal IP addresses, of devices
accessing the Boxee Platform"
Also, as I wrote in my blog post, they never responded to my questions that I sent to privacy@boxee.tv.
I find this in their privacy policy quite interesting:
While we collect and store IP address information, that
information is not made public. We do at times, however,
share this information with our partners, service
providers and other persons with whom we conduct
business. We may share hashes of your IP address with
other third parties, but these hashes cannot feasibly be
reversed into the IP addresses themselves or linked to
you individually.
I bet they've done this wrong. "Protecting" data by hashing it doesn't work when the number of possible hashed items is small. There are only 4 billion IPv4 addresses.
Comments
This shouldn't be news to anyone because the whole point of Boxee -the very reason it existed to begin with- was to integrate social media concepts into a HTPC. The Boxee devs have been very clear about that - in fact it was central to their advertising back when they first launched.
If Boxee had been secretive about this or even added such features post-launch, then I might understand the authors rant a little more. But complaining that a social-optimized HTPC leaks data is a bit like complaining that Facebook shouldn't be used to back up private photos when it's quite clear that people intentionally use Facebook to share their pictures.
And for what it's worth, the social media stuff in Boxee was actually quite nice (I've not used it since the beta - so I can't comment on how it performs now). I could watch some stuff on YouTube and then recommend it to my friends and visa versa. It worked like a more convenient word of mouth (ie "Hey Bob, I saw this documentary about the territorial habits of cats and I know you like cats so you might want to check it out". I could just switch on my HTPC when I was in the mood for some TV and there would be my friends recommendations). It's just a pity the UI looked like a competition between drunk people to invent the most gaudy interface known to man.
I am the author of that blog post.
At the time that post was written, their privacy policy never stated that they collect this information. It seems to have been updated since to say that they do in fact collect this information, but they don't offer any insight into how long they store it for. Their privacy policy now states:
Also, as I wrote in my blog post, they never responded to my questions that I sent to privacy@boxee.tv.I find this in their privacy policy quite interesting:
I bet they've done this wrong. "Protecting" data by hashing it doesn't work when the number of possible hashed items is small. There are only 4 billion IPv4 addresses.I just don't trust them.