On rating panels for metrics companies...

There's report that Nielsen is having trouble trying to expand its ratings coverage of their existing 5000 households of the TV panels to cover other media like web surfing and mobile devices. Although I'm not on the Nielsen's panels, I'm not surprised since I have rejected the request from comScore for much the same privacy concerns.

I've been on the comScore panels for a number of years. It's pretty painless and easy. You install a pretty lightweight software on the machine, and it tracks your web activities (where you go, what you do, how long do you stay, etc). I mostly let it do its job, and I go about my own things. This has been for a few years now. Every three months, they cut me a check of $15. I thought, that's not too bad, for doing nothing. But of course, I've been doing _all_ the things that are being monitored (login to check bank balance, web purchases, etc).

And then, I install the personal firewall. I had not expected my machine to be attacked on such regular intervals, but indeed there are at least 5-7 intrusion attempts every single day, including virus attacks and port scans. While it shouldn't be of surprise to me, I'm still very troubled by the frequency of it, and that simply by leaving my machine online, I'm inviting hackers in.

It begins to dawn on me that by installing comSore's software, I'm emitting all my activities back to them to track as well. And I mean ALL of my life details. Well, I did agree to it, and for a modest sum of $15 every 3 months, I had been effectively selling my life away on the cheap. So, I stopped with comScore. The firewall now wouldn't even allow their software to be installed. It's been close to a year now.

ComSore does try to lure me back with a $25 check for reactivation. But I don't think I'll go back. Being on a TV panel is entirely different from online monitoring. Watching TV is such a passive act (you do nothing much other than eye movements), but online activities on the web is a whole new ballgame.

Perhaps one day, if I use another computer which does nothing other than simple stuffs (just surfing, no login or anything), I might consider installing comScore again. But I don't think I'll ever use a machine without at least a firewall which would disallow spywares. So much for comScore or any other online panels.