Nielsen to add portable device ratings

Go spyware!

this doesn't have to spyware as much as paying the networks that these devices are used on to supply data on what they are already doing: monitoring their networks.

It would be a rather unobtrusive thing for, AT&T and Apple et. al., to provide information on downloads that are purchased over the cellular networks. Itunes can easily provide information on what TV shows are being downloaded. And other networks can easily do the same thing.

If you think that Verizon doesn't know that you accessed the ESPN mobile online to get your teams scores without having to have spyware in your phone then you really dont know much about these things.

Heck credit cards could provide this same information in many cases if they could filter out which purchases were for video data as opposed to some other online service or product.

Spyware need not be involved.

And if you are THAT worried about your privacy then you need to insure that ALL communications over ANY phone and over ANY ISP are encrypted. Heck, with the satellite and less glamorous capabilities that the govt now has you might want to be concerned about the spoken word as well. You never know just WHO might be listening.

But back to the phone lines and spyware: even your old style landline phones flags words that the govt deems as 'hot' and the flag allows an agent, if they want to and with proper authority, easy access to the exact moment in time when the word was uttered and the context it was uttered in (perhaps you have heard the old joke about everyone in America getting on the phone at the same time and saying 'BOMB' and causing the system to crash-- not much of a joke).

And so yes, this DOES mean that all of your phone calls ARE being, and have been, recorded by the phone companies for YEARS. They haven't been data mined until just recently via the NSA spying program but that is a different issue all together.

I would have thought that portable device ratings were included already. They have some ground to make up then