It’s been a few months since I have posted….holidays, family, work and what not.  My goal this year is to get better and provide more substance.  There are so many topics to choose from and not enough time to put it all into words, but something stood out to me today that I felt was worthy of ten minutes of writing.  The fine print.

For the longest time, I have been working on a project that identifies how our digital privacy has been compromised by the simple things we do everyday.  While that project is still a work in progress, I still feel there is a treasure trove of information that the general public should be aware of

My family subscribes to Hulu for $5.99 per month. (remember when it was free?)  With that subscription, we get access to a fair amount of content ranging from movies to the latest TV shows, including binge-worthy content like ‘The Handsmaid Tale’ or my personal favorite ‘Drunk History’.  While browsing around in my account settings one evening, I came across an option called ‘Manage Nielsen Measurement’.

Now I have been around since black and white TVs were still in the home (I grew up with one), so Nielsen ratings are very familiar to me.  Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link to see what ‘Nielsen’ was up to in my home.

I was quite disappointed that I didn’t see much in the way of data, but was very surprised at the notion that I was ‘opted-in’ to what appeared to be a measurement of the performance of their ad campaigns that are run while my family and I stream content from Hulu.

Opted-in?  Me?  I rarely opt-in to anything, let alone something that will knowingly measure or monitor how my family uses a service.  I’m just not that type of guy.

So while I let the reality of this discovery sink in for a second, I will stop here and continue this ‘observation’ on another day to bring a bit more clarity to what Hulu and Nielsen are attempting to do here.  My suspicion is 90% of Hulu users are like me and have no clue about what this ‘measurement software’ is doing with our information and what lasting impact it may have on our daily lives.  To Be Continued…….