Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data
nullsweep.com
nullsweep.com
To sync a "last read page" across devices, you need to send a location back to Amazon. It's also appropriate to tie a location to a device, so you can pick the appropriate device to sync your position from. And, when you highlight a word, the translation, definition, and wiki page is brought up, so of course it's being sent to bing and wikipedia.
There are valid concerns here (there's too much information being sent overall - the location data doesn't need to be sent with every page turn, for example), but these concerns are being buried behind FUD about none of this data needing to be transmitted.
EDIT: Can I also point out the ironic nature of griping about Amazon's analytics collection while running an analytics suite on the webpage yourself?
zql=Kindle%20Collects%20a%20Surprisingly%20Large%20Amount%20of%20Data pqo=1 xfg=1 xqi=946451 h=8 m=58 s=11 eqm=https%3A%2F%2Fnullsweep.com%2Fkindle-collects-a-surprisingly-large-amount-of-data%2F uel=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F nvn=b271bb7f9e0fe444 xpx=1598364493 bqq=2 oso=0 ajh=1598366510 lyz=1598364493 _ref=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F euq=0 cookie=1 res=1080x1920 fpr=429 rlp=xnxpI1
Or, you can trust that a position in a book (bookmarks, notes, etc.) is not sensitive information that really needs to be encrypted. This is my - perhaps overly pragmatic - position.
Yeah, it's not like Amazon can afford security experts to work on this or anything.
>Or, you can trust that a position in a book (bookmarks, notes, etc.) is not sensitive information that really needs to be encrypted.
This is an ignorant position that has been proven wrong over, and over, and over again. Private data should be secure by default, because otherwise eventually someone will figure out how to abuse it. This is a lesson form bazillion fraud schemes and social engineering hacks everyone in tech should have learned by now.
If all data is secured by default, then the identification of PII is not about deciding to secure that data, it is about identifying where we might impose (and often this isn't required, but now we can consider it) additional UX burden or complexity in order to add _additional_ security.
Might be worth noting that you can opt out of their data collection (on the e-reader, at a minimum) as well. Settings > Device Options > Advanced Options > Privacy or in the device management console in your account on amazon.com
> Highlighting or tapping any word will send the requests with the text to Bing Translate and Wikipedia, as well as back to Amazon.
Is there a reason why that text needs to be sent before the user clicks the "translate" button? Is there a reason why it needs to be sent to Amazon?
Yes - UX latency. I would expect this kind of thing to take a few thousand milliseconds, and shaving off a few hundred milliseconds from between when the user highlights text and when they select "translate" is significant. The fact that this data is being sent to Wikipedia of all places further signals that the usage is likely to be innocuous.
Do I think that this is globally a good design decision? No, for both engineering and privacy reasons. There's definitely no good reason why it should be sent to Amazon at all.
I was wracking my brain on this, and all I could come up with was "to independently verify the invoicing for Bing translations" and "how many times are people accessing the definition/translation and not highlighting". So, analytics, not something that explicitly benefits the user.
For example, Amazon doesn't need to know where I am when I request a definition or translation. If they're concerned about usage, they only need to know how many times I actually used one or both of those features per day, per week, or month. They don't need to know instantly every single time a word is highlighted.
How? For all we know, it isn't granular - it might be aggregated at the server level to hide specific user's actions. But they'd still need to be sending in the data from the device to the server.
Also it should really be opt in. Our at least opt out. I hate Amazon looking over my shoulder while reading a book.
If the refresh rate is 5 seconds, and the network response time is 500ms, than eliminating the 500ms response time means we are 10% less likely to miss the train. On average, the time for the text to appear on the screen decreases by 500ms.
All this assumes the refreshes happening on a static schedule. If the software can trigger the refresh, then it’s a lot simpler. The 500ms improvement in latency would apply equally to every engagement with the translate feature.
If you want to see what I mean by the ghosting of user interface elements being more perceptible, try using KOReader. The ghosting after using a menu can be quite noticable (at least on Kobo devices, which are based on the same technology).
And the fact that the screens are slow should be motivation to make the rest of the system as responsive as possible. A good software engineer will work around bottlenecks, not shrug their shoulders and introduce new ones.
I like this, as a user. I don't want MORE buttons to tap through when I'm trying to define or translate a word. Especially since the Kindle eink screen and UI is not the most responsive.
If it took 2 taps, I would switch platforms.
Good tip, I'm going to give this a whirl. Unfortunately, all the network calls add a significant amount of latency even if one didn't care about privacy.
Snooping on users during e-commerce transactions, sure.
But recording user's detailed interactions with every ebook? I hope that's a big surprise to your average Kindle user.
It would be great to see a data request response and how much of this data is retained and for how long. It's clearly not anonymized at the request level.
Very easy to see a future where just reading certain books or reading certain books too many times could flag you as dangerous or be used to support a mental incompetence hearing resulting in loss of rights.
I doubt it. Here are some features the Kindle phone app intentionally advertises to the user:
- prediction of how long the book will take to complete, based on your reading rate
- tracking of whether or not you read anything on any given day
It's good for cases exactly like this - devices where you don't have control over /etc/hosts (or where you have lots of them and don't want to keep the hosts files in sync). I use it for my Samsung TV to keep them from phoning home (but still letting me use apps)
Edit: you can also set up a DoH endpoint and filter traffic while also allowing Encrypted SNI to work
Is the pihole a DNS server or a firewall? Sibling comments suggest it's a DNS server, but that doesn't answer this need at all -- if you don't control /etc/hosts, you don't control the device. It can do its resolution however it wants. Most obviously, it can include the domain names you don't want it to reach in its own /etc/hosts file, which you just said you didn't control.
And, good question. It would be nice, though I'm sure they've buried it in their multi-page privacy doc somewhere.
EDIT: No, it's not opt-in. Reading failure on my part.
https://www.epubor.com/whispersync-for-kindle.html
"And "Whispersync for Books" is enabled on Kindle Fire, Kindle devices and apps by default."
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/amazon-whispernet-work-58992...
"Whispersync is on by default in all new Kindles, but you can turn off the option on individual devices if you have multiple readers attached to your account."
https://ebookfriendly.com/how-to-disable-data-collection-kin...
"How to disable data collection on your Kindle or Fire device"
That said, given that it provides a high value to the end user (I use it daily), I personally don't mind.
It is just a shame that you have no options. Had to quickly search if my kindle has GPS capabilities. Gladly it does not.
"Kindle Collects a Surprisingly Large Amount of Data" is a completely honest and in my opinion correct statement. So yes, companies are dishonest in their data collection practices and responding with exaggeration is maybe wrong. But I do care more about the data collection issue.
Note that it doesn't just suck because you're giving up using the Kindle itself. It also sucks because you'll be losing your entire collection of Ebooks, which are DRM-encumbered and can not be ported to other non-Amazon devices/platforms/apps.
This makes it extremely difficult for other privacy-respecting platforms to compete on the market, since using them requires the user to either break the law by stripping DRM from their books, or to abandon their entire purchased library.
Future TOS/EULA/Privacy changes that might not have been in place when a user originally bought their Kindle can thus be forced on them by making it prohibitively expensive for the user to opt out or change ecosystems.
I'm seeing conflicting things online that range from "just hit this toggle and you're good", to "you can disable some of it, but not all", to "this only opts out of data processing for ads/analytics".
If there really is an option to disable the collection entirely, then that would mitigate a large number of the problems I have with that practice. Of course I'd love for it to be opt-in, but just giving the option would still be better than many other devices like Smart TVs.
It does mean that if you want to be absolutely sure your Kindle isn't phoning home, you can't use the Kindle browser, and you need a laptop or similar to download the things you want to transfer over. It's not a perfect solution for everyone, but for the typical HN reader who is concerned about telemetry, it should work.
I download the ebooks themselves using the Kindle application on my computer (if I'm using Amazon to get them, which I don't always), and then use Calibre to manage/import/convert/strip DRM from them. I don't need the sync functionality, or to be able to look things up on the internet (not being able to do that is a feature as far as I'm concerned!). I just want text on a page. I like the "e-reader" experience, and I have no desire to read books on a phone or tablet. I have one Kindle, and it comes with me if I think I'm going to have the opportunity to read when I'm out of the house.
Of course, if you're using Amazon to get your books they'll still build a profile of your reading habits, but there's something about tracking the exact parts of a book I'm reading, the bits I might linger on or reread, which feels extra intrusive to me, and which I categorically don't want.
I also never connect my Kindle to the internet. (The phone app does connect.) You don't have to allow it to connect to Amazon once. Mine has never connected.
The Kindle has an option to "sync last page", which you can turn off -- that sounds like it could be exactly what you're asking for, but more experimentation would be needed to know for sure.
I didn't see any mention of this config in the OP, aside from mentioning that the feature exists, so it's unclear whether the data being sent is used just for that feature, or whether less data is sent if the sync feature is turned off.
But yeah, the Kindle iOS app is crap in many ways - the one that bugs me is how hot it makes my phone. I mean, WTF?
why not? if i open a book on my phone that i stopped reading on my kindle, i want it to open to the last location i read to on my kindle. not ten pages back because it doesn't sync data every page turn for some imaginary privacy benefit.
It can't just track the very last page in the book that you read, because authors were gaming that by encouraging people to immediately skip to the last page of very large works they didn't otherwise care about. Instead there's some kind of heuristic that tries to figure out if you've more-or-less-normally read the book.
There's no motive on Amazon's part to do it this way, it would be a hassle to implement, possibly not great for battery life, and I expect that users don't care much.
Frankly, I don't care much, in practice. In principle, yes; everything which can be kept private, should be. But Amazon knowing what page I'm on just doesn't discomfit me, the way the prospect of some company being able to read my messages does.
The most common response about online privacy is "what does is matter if X knows Y? I've got nothing to hide".
People already don't care, and I guarantee they also don't care that Amazon knows what page they are on in the book the are reading. There are much bigger issues to focus on
Why is location needed for that? Shouldn't a device id and account work just fine? I don't need to share my location to sync other devices.
With all that said, I do dream of a PINE64 E Ink device (or something that's open and hackable).
Fine. So you allow them to collect it. However, don't decide for others if it's "invasive" or "perfectly appropriate" for them or not. Do it opt-in such that people who wants to share their data could do that.
Oh yeah, and offer them payment for that. They deserve it.
Still, I think it has the best value proposition for an e-ink tablet at the moment, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Who knows how long it will take to get good enough yields for affordable consumer products.
Attempting to get the subnet IP address? That seems pretty invasive.
From the article:
> Attempt to get the IP address on the local network (a 10. address, which was incorrect for me)
How much time and frustration do I potentially waste on something that no one ends up using?
Things like this are very useful and it's strange to me that people aren't sympathetic to that perspective.
Telemetry can tell you what users are doing. It doesn't tell you why.
I'd rather people be able to opt-in, but conceptually I'm not really upset that people can see my usage patterns, etc.
Telemetry won't tell you nobody wants a feature you haven't implemented yet. User research might.
It's the difference between someone inviting you to come into their home for a visit, and you breaking in whenever you feel like to take notes on what they're doing.
First, if an entity want my input and are going to use it, they should be decent enough to pay me for giving it. Why do users need to work for free for Amazon?
Second, is it opt-in? If not, then there's an ethical issue here, even if a manual opt-out option is given (does it?). If there's no opt-out, there's a double ethical issue.
Thirdly, is this data deleted once it's being used for the goals you mentioned, or is it kept, making it a risk both for leaking and for Amazing deciding to put it for a different usage in the future.
It's deception. Please put on the box a big warning, "THIS DEVICE COLLECTS YOUR DATA", similar to those on cigarette boxes.
If the industry moved to a standardized disclosure form (e.g. something like the HUD-1 [1] in real estate sales), people would stop complaining about this.
2. Nobody reads them because most of the time they are explicitly user hostile, I'm pretty sure they are designed to prevent users from reading them.
Creative Commons was on the right track with their human-readable licenses, see e.g. this example [1]. Apple is on the right track with their App Store "nutrition labels" [2]. This is what we need for people to make informed decisions. For physical objects like a Kindle, I believe such "nutrition labels" should ideally be put on the box (physical store) and website (online stores), so the consumer is aware before they go home and turn on the device (this makes it easier to compare the Kindle to a Boox or Nook at the store).
[1]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
[2]: https://mashable.com/article/apple-privacy-nutrition-labels-...
A year or two ago Amazon was swearing that humans don't listen to Alexa conversations until we learned they actually do. IIRC Amazon tried to backpedal: "of course they do, it is their job, we meant humans don't listen _for fun_".
At this point just assume the internet connectivity as such a warning.
Kinda like refusing to believe that climate change is real does not change the reality.
You can strip the big here.
Also, plenty of people just leave the kindle in airplane mode and use third party software like Calibre to manage their libraries.
It's a book. You don't need to collect and track every fucking action I do to find out if your stupid highlighter is being used in Poland.
Privacy LARPers are a tiny segment of the market, the average person doesn’t really care if their ‘usage of the highlighter function is tracked’
If so, why don't they loudly advertise the data collection and do it only with opt-in?
It's not that the average user doesn't care if they're tracked, it's that they're not aware that they're being tracked.
Plenty of companies are quite transparent about their data collection practices (set up an Apple device recently?)
Most people are aware of data collection, they care more about functionality though.
It's not what I said.
I wrote my opinion already, but I'll repeat it anyway in case it was not clear. I think you can't know if people care about it or not, as long as they're not informed about it.
I have not, not recently, but what you say is simply bullshit. They're "transparent" in that they give you a ToS loaded with legalese that they know you couldn't easily read through to find just how much and where they're squeezing your life for information to store. In cases where they simplify this with some less legalistic declarations of data use, what you often see there are numerous weasel words and phrases to very ambiguously describe what's being done. You know, things like "We MAY collect some information for the sake of improving user experience" and blah blah....
Then of course, there's the outright lying, which also happens, in which big tech companies simply fail to mention some types of data collection anywhere (the Amazon Alexa voice recordings being listened to by humans is a good example iof this)
https://www.groundctl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/csm_IMG...
Apple prompts you for each piece of data collection during the setup of an iOS device (and lets you choose if you want to share).
Most companies hide it in legalese. Some companies claim they're not sending any data and then send it anyway. Looking at you Philips Hue lights.
But they do.
More importantly, the only usecase mentioned in the discussion that resembles anything like analysis is synching page reads across devices, and tracking reading progress to compensate authors who make their books available through subscription services.
Either you know stuff about "analysing" that for some reason you're keeping a secret, or you're talking nonsense about stuff you have no grasp over.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24271258
It's written there:
> "most of what's mentioned in this article are metrics used to understand how the features are used (bookmarks, highlights, dictionnary, etc.), how much they are used, and in which country."
Besides, I don't appreciate phrases like "fabricating accusations" or "you're talking nonsense about stuff you have no grasp over". I'm may be wrong, it happens often, but even if I am this aggressive tone is not in place. You can point out my mistakes politely if they exist, same way as I do with yours.
This is an unnecessarily denigrating term at this point in the conversation. It's not LARPing to want to be able to read a book or take notes without being tracked.
Absolutely agree but it is LARPing to pretend this collection is for anything but improving a product. Nobody is out to get you and nobody particularly cares how often you specifically turn the page (the data is useful in aggregate).
> We also use it to develop and improve products and features for all our customers and to gain insights into how our products are being used, assess customer engagement, identify potential quality issues, analyze our business, and customize marketing offers.
Targeted marketing is, in itself, something that's reasonable for someone to want to block regardless of whether or not there's a mustached villain tracking you. Privacy is about more than stalkers, it's about the effects of data usage. For some people, targeted advertising is a harm regardless of whether or not the company knows their name.
To go a step farther, I also don't understand why it's LARPing to be worried about a company who is actively being investigated for misusing seller data.
I bring this up every time that one of these threads/stories gets posted, but there's (appologies, but for lack of a better word) some kind of weird gaslighting that always happens in these situations. Before it broke that Echo and Siri queries were sometimes listened to by 3rd-party contractors, if I had posted that suspicion on HN people would have called me paranoid. Once the story broke, the argument then shifted to, "well of course they're doing that, how else would you improve the service?" That kind of thinking applies to Amazon as well.
I don't know that it's likely, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Amazon might use this information in the future to help target pirates, change book rankings on their store, perform highly targeted advertising and book recommendations, or turn it over during government subpoenas. Those are completely reasonable usages that their privacy policy leaves them permission to do.
Similarly, I don't know that it's likely, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that this information might get sent to 3rd parties with less responsible data practices, or that employees might be given direct access to it in an unobfuscated form[1]. It's not something I'm losing sleep over, but I wouldn't be shocked to my core if someday all this information got leaked publicly and correlated to people's email addresses.
These are all situations where privacy matters regardless of the original intention. The "I only want to make my service better" defense applies to basically all data collection that most companies do. Even advertisers use that defense. It's reasonable for people to want to avoid being a part of that.
Of course, it's also reasonable for people not to care, to say that hacking is a risk they're willing to live with, and that they don't mind targeted ads, and that the books they read aren't sensitive. But it's not LARPing if someone has a different opinion on whether or not they want to tolerate that stuff.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
[1]: See, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/12/12/creepy-net.... Is it LARPing for me to be weirded out by a marketing department trolling over my reading/listening/watching habits looking for viral tweet material?
Sometimes a better product comes out of better business metrics, but other times they’re directly opposed.
Now if you look at opposite case, where a feature is worse for user experience but helps business metrics, that feature will definitely be launched. A small, mostly harmless example: Ever tried to hide twitter’s recommended accounts? It gives you the option to “see less often”, but curiously there’s no option to stop seeing the window forever. Why? Because clearly it benefits twitter’s business on average to keep showing these recommendations.
I’ve built enough dark patterns at my last job to know it always comes down to business metrics.
Maybe it's just me but every tech product I use these days gets worse over time. If something does get better, two things get worse. They mostly try to optimize for user engagement and not user experience.
> Understanding your users is vitally important.
And the only way to understand people is spying on them?
I look at VLC as a great example to follow. Their stats show 3.4 billion downloads (https://www.videolan.org/vlc/stats/downloads.html), yet they do no telemetry at all. The product works great. It could be improved of course, but Outlook could also greatly be improved, and they have high-salary staff and a boatload of data they extract from users. Yet it's slow as hell and has lots of UX I disagree with.
I'm myself the author of a replacement of Windows "alt-tab" on macOS (https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/) which doesn't do any telemetry. I can lead the roadmap, with the help of the community, without spying on how users set their preferences and use the app.
As a matter of fact, it can be argued that acting that way can be negative value as it's reinforcing popular usage; or from the power-users perspective, dumbing down the software. By definition, advanced features will have low usage. It doesn't mean it should be removed.
Lastly, think about non-software businesses. Many amazing products have simply no way to gather data when the products are in the users homes. They rely on gathering data by talking to customers at the points of purchase, customer care, are in various forums with enthusiast users. This model has shown great results, so it is in no way clearly to be avoided in favor of telemetry-everything.
The sort of telemetry mentioned in the article is used for UX purposes, and God knows FLOSS sucks at UX.
And by the way, Debian collects and reports telemetry since the early 2000s, and Firefox is quite open on how much telemetry it collects.
Which is exactly why we have regulation that forbids these practices, to protect the gullible from themselves. Furthermore, do you think privacy should be the privilege of just those that are smart and keen enough to be aware and prepared to engage in a relentless and perpetual battle with the most dark of patterns with every click they make?
Philosophy should always be store the minimum amount of data to provide the function that the user wants.
IP address is transitory and shouldn't be kept longer than needed for the tcp session, maybe it sticks in firewall logs, but that shouldn't be used for anything other than security.
goodread account details would only apply if you connect to goodread, I'm not sure what the benefit of that is, but I could see that 'user abc123 read this book' is useful data - again ask if you can send the data.
I don't doubt the developers are using it for 'morally acceptable' purposes, but I don't trust Amazon not to abuse that data later down the line!
I really don't feel that anyone needs to know precisely what pages I have viewed in a specific book.
Efficiency is not always the best humanistic approach. So maybe they support unused features and maybe they let some features wither that lots of people like. Maybe it would make things cost a little more. I think people would be ok with some of those inefficiencies.
IMHO, The software today is miles better at UX.
I rely on that regularly as I use both my phone and a Kindle device to read books.
That it's an opt-out and not opt-in is not a good thing, but it can be opted out of on the e-readers.
- Go to the homescreen
- Open the hamburger menu
- Tap settings
- Device Options
- Advanced Options
- Privacy
- Disable
Is it confirmed though that these network requests definitely stop after that is switched?
Understanding how the book reader features are used in practice is good. Selling the same data to a advertiser is bad. Profiling people into predefined groups is bad, and the technology has risk of having false positives/negatives that reinforce stereotypes. The law has yet to catch up to treat information gathered by libraries and information gathered by a developer of e-readers as being very similar in risks.
An instructive case here is Target figuring out that they could use customer purchase history to detect, with a pretty decent degree of confidence, when a customer was pregnant. They then proceeded to use this model to send out mailings, and those mailings resulted in people being outed in rather compromising and potentially seriously harmful ways.
Why is that so hard to understand?
Why don't developers ever push back against this sort of thing? Collectively we build this stuff, we are not 'soldiers following orders' which makes us responsible for what we create.
The current actual use is not relevant. Consent and the possible uses are relevant.
Every webserver logs the IP address and the URL visited. Do you think most people know this? Do deverlopers push against this?
I don't think the average person knows this. A lot of people even have no clue about internet. So there is no consent most of the time. And we, the developers, just let the logs running.
"with kindle, you’re using your own device and there’s no expectation that amazon will be snooping"
Well I would absolutely have this expectation. I expect a device that is connected to the internet snooping on me. Then there is the Amazon brand. I absolutely don't trust them so I expect them to snoop in me.
But to be clear: I absolutely hate that my privacy is gone. I use all kinds of blockers to disable tracking and I also agree with jacquesm snooping is wrong. But I still think his point is too black and white and therefore unfair.
Yes, most people know this by now.
Yes, some developers push against this.
Also: It's the law. Collecting data without consent is not always legal. Whether that particular bit of data rises to the level of requiring consent is left as an exercise for the reader for their particular jurisdiction and industry.
I maintain a webserver - https://git.sr.ht/~ancarda/tls-redirector - that has no support for logging. If you wanted logs for some reason, you'd need to modify the source code to add that functionality.
Granted, tls-redirector isn't a general purpose webserver, but even in production I tend to turn off logging. I just don't see the need to have logs lying around that I never use.
This.
Usefulness is NOT the same as usage.
Metrics can tell that story though so you’re arguing a straw man.
Example: If you see that 99% of users have never used a function ever - you have a pretty good idea that it needs to be reworked or removed. You may also see a function that is used by 80% of users once a month, that you may opt to keep.
Devs think it is either telemetry or develop blind but in reality software was developed (and possibly was better) before telemetry using focus groups.
I mean, we already knew this, but it means any and all Amazon hardware must be considered potentially hostile.
I was under the impression there was a revenue-allocation problem that Amazon needed to solve (Kindle Unlimited subscriptions?), that depended on reliable reading statistics. E.g. How many people read book A?
Wish I could find the article, but the implication was there were a ton of publishers attempting to game the system. For example, by publishing blank, very long "books" and having them "read" by software automation.
The Kindling never leaves Amazon properties; it is not yours even though you paid almost the full price of a book.
If there is rule of law in the US and EU, these will eventually become free e-books, that is, separated from Amazon; they will regain the status and properties of the book.
Same with any data you store on an iOS device. You never let a device you don't control have the only copy of any data important to you.
Back when they had a cell phone in them. I was standing behind a guy who was supporting it. "Uh lets bring up where you are at? It says you are 10 miles off the coast of miami?...." "oh yeah I am calling from my yacht" "do you see any cell towers?" "no" "It kinda needs those to work. I am surprised I got the location data."
Edit: I know I could convert between formats, but that process is not always perfect and can lose important formatting.
It will convert any format of E-Book to a compatible format for the Kindle (usually MOBI) and allows you to upload it directly. I use it often and it's an amazing piece of software!
Edit: Oh no, Amazon removed KindleGen! When did that happen? I still have x86 copies for Linux and windows if anyone wants it. Supposedly "Kindle Previewer" can do the same thing, but a cursory glance looks like it no longer supports Linux...
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765...
We know where this is going, don't we? Offering interoperability in the beginning and then gradually taking it away - the old bait and switch trick. We consumers fall for it again and again.
I doubt I have a copy of it somewhere. Does anyone have / know of a copy of kindlegen for Linux anywhere?
Edit: Wayback machine has it, thank god. Had a very real sense of loss there. Unsure why it's a project I've hardly touched for years. https://github.com/wjdp/gotdict for the interested.
Highly recommend.
But it is a pretty clever hack to get a hostile machine to not connect to the internet as airplane mode is (I assume) regulated behavior.
eta: My point being: Now you're in a twisty little maze full of corner cases, all different. Not the sort of thing much loved by Amazon (or any of the GRAFT).
Yup, this was once a thing - you didn't need wifi for sync or downloading books at all.
It doesn't seem so far-fetched that the Kindle might, too.
> if the developers take the egregious step of nerfing airplane mode,
and I was responding that IF the developers decide to nerf the airplane mode it's very possible they will start using any open AP; some TV's are reportedly doing this already
Literally any device you own with WiFi could be updated tomorrow to connect to any open access point.
Any cheap budget tablet can read ebooks and stay off the internet.
The downside is that eInk currently only supports black-and-white and turning pages is roughly only as fast as turning the page of a book.
Also, battery life is counted in days (and sometimes weeks) and not in hours.
E-ink Kaleido with 4096 colors at 100 ppi are available commercially since past few weeks
Why is it subsidized? Obviously to make it more fun to buy books, but also collecting valuable data on your reading habits. Obviously they know _what_ you're reading but it seems useful to them also to know what you bookmark etc.
They also have all the hardware they need for location history tracking by remembering wifi broadcasts seen. Is it known if that's being uploaded?
E-ink gives you Better screen for text, a lot better battery life, no apps, no notifications, no video ads, o ads in general, nothing flashy.
And kindles are relatively cheap, and available almost everywhere.
[1]: https://hackaday.io/project/168761-the-open-book-feather
Never supply a wifi connection during setup, and instead immediately engage airplane mode. USB transfer is easy with something like Calibre, which also handily converts ePub to Mobi for Kindle use.
It used to be that you could buy Kindle books and download them to your computer for transfer to the Kindle via USB, but they seem to have made that more difficult in the last year or two. Other sources still work fine, though.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056, see "Significant locations"
Last but not least, Significant Locations data is not just described as "end-to-end encrypted and cannot be read by Apple", it's clearly in the list of items under "By enabling Location Services, location-based system services such as these will also be enabled": e.g., if you're really, really bothered by this, you can turn it off.
Even if you trust that Apple does not use it for anything else, you cannot check this (no source code) and you cannot be sure that they won’t start using it in the future.
Opt-out tracking is not ethical. It should be opt-in.
The pitfall in all this, though, is that there are a lot of commercial books that are only available from publishers that use DRM, and personally I don't consider DRM a sufficient justification for piracy -- so that leaves me stuck with locked books regardless. Lately I've been buying them from Apple rather than Amazon, although if I actually jump through whatever hoops are required to set up DRM stripping with Calibre for Kindle books, assuming that's still possible, I may switch back.
That fact that Amazon collects these very detailed metrics has been well known for a long time. You will find old discussions in the MobileRead forum. Here is a thread from 2013 "Block Big Brother":
Same, however I had to connect my Kindle Oasis to the internet 1 time after purchase though, if i remember correct it was to download the dictionaries (for translation) i needed. And i think there was a feature that was missing until i connected it to the internet once (i used a new/temporary account for that) but can't remember what feature that was though.
Plus, for all the people saying basically "it's for your own good", the battery lasts much longer on aeroplane mode. For this device, for me, WiFi is an anti-feature.
[edit] as others have noted, it's possible to permanently use offline mode, and transfer books via usb cable.
> Unfortunately, in order to use a non-Kindle application, I have to buy DRM-Free books.
One can remove DRM for amazon's ebook format (.azw3 ?) via some python scripts. You didn't hear it from me though.
Keeping it in offline mode doesn't help.
Permanently keeping it offline and only transferring via USB does.
Not for the new KFX format. Only way to get around that is to use an older version of the kindle desktop app that downloads the azw format. Workaround won't last long though. And won't work on newer macs because the old version is a 32bit app .
1: https://epubor.com/how-to-convert-kindle-kfx-to-epubpdfmobi-...
I've found some O'Reilly ebooks only available on amazon in the format "Kindle Edition" (ie. KFX). Pretty aggressive market strategy from amazon given EPUB3 is the technical standard, but there you have it.
(Either that, or the files I download from there aren't actually AZW3 files but just KFX files with an .azw3 extension.)
The fonts can be a pain to descramble though.
While MOBI began as one's company's proprietary solution, the format is well over a decade old now and quite well understood by the Free Software community. Calibre can convert EPUB (or anything else, really) to MOBI, so you can buy or pirate your ebooks from anywhere and easily put them on a Kindle.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications...
Psst, "Designing Data Intensive Applications" was very good read. Do you know similar books that focus on distributed systems?
In principle, you're absolutely right. In practice, .mobi is easy to generate, modify, fold, spindle, and mutilate with free/Free software.
Even Amazon's .azw is just mobi with * replacing $.
> We collect Personal Information when you use or otherwise interact with the Kobo Services. For example, we collect information about how you use the Kobo Services, such as pages you view, the rate at which you consume e-content (how often and for how long), genres, authors or subject matter you prefer and searches you make or share, the ebooks or audiobooks you have liked, comments you have left and also websites you have viewed through links in the comments. [1]
It's depressing that the market will not stomach the true cost of "dumb" hardware anymore, so it's becoming harder and harder to find. Everything that can be subsidised with hoovering up data, or pushing content, is. If this is the thin end of the wedge, I dread to think where we're heading.
I have an 2010 Kindle Keyboard and naively thought that we wouldn't end up here. The closer we got the less likely I am to "upgrade".
What isn’t collecting “too much” data at this point?
E-Readers do a hell of a good job at emulating the experience with e-ink displays & you can't compete with the ability to carry 1000's of books in your bag, but there's something about the reading experience that I wish to keep completely 'analogue'!
I also like to go back to re-read books. With non-fiction I'll often want to go back to reference or quote something, and with fiction I love reimmersing myself in the worlds the author's create.
I've amassed quite a little library of books that I still enjoy having access to and it's lovely. But it's also /terribly/ inconvenient to move to a new apartment. It's also quite annoying when I'm visiting a place, and I'd love to pull up a favourite story but didn't think to bring it with me.
I've started moving to a hybrid solution - My absolute favourite stories I keep in paper because I enjoy the feel, but for most books having them digitally much nicer.
I think there's room for both.
I use my Kindle for reading my pop-fiction and stuff I like to read on the go or in bed.
I buy, on average, about one book per month on paper.
There's nothing quite like the smell and feel and experience of paper books, and there's nothing quite like the convenience of Kindle.
The philosophy of Amazon appears to be to do as much as possible in the hopes that one day it will be useful. This is at odds with the principle of philosophical skepticism, that because we can't be sure of the consequences of our actions we should strive to do as little as possible. The data could be hacked and leak out, for example. There is tremendous uncertainty around things like that.
I doubt most users need a real-time sync of their book location to the cloud, unless they read on multiple devices.
Also, if you use the kindle to get loaned/library books on this particular model, they aren't removed even if the due-date is exceeded until you reconnect to wifi, which has been handy at times...
I concur with keeping the wifi off while not downloading, because battery life is way better, but it doesn't help against data collection.
> Each request also isn't sent as soon as it's generated. A number of these records are created and stored locally, then uploaded (note the sequence_number field). Even if a person is offline while reading, this data is stored and sent when reconnected.
One of the much-advertised features of the Kindle is its ability to highlight a word and look it up against a dictionary, against Wikipedia, or against the web.
Using the Kindle's Wikipedia function actually requires going through Amazon's servers and is a privacy violation, so I would not recommend users do that.
"There have been cases of Amazon removing specific books from customer accounts (and kindles)."
It redirected me from:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-th...
to
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from...
So it seems I am not allowed to read up about this reference.
Or some underpaid developer messed up the redirects.
Either way this issue about data collection is interesting in its own right, but this other issue of global redirects also feels important, but I only say that as someone who tried to follow the news here.
But this doesn't actually surprise anybody, right?
No. All you have to do is own an old Kindle (buy one on ebay if necessary). Then you can download DRM protected Kindle files from Amazon for this old device, and Calibre and the appropriate plugin can un-DRM them, and transform them in any other format (epub, mobi, text, rtf...) for you to use on your app of choice.
It's certainly better to buy DRM-free books directly if you can find them, but the above solution works quite well.
The domain I extracted for my kobo aura:
api.ipinfodb.com
api.kobobooks.com
auth.kobobooks.com
authorize.kobo.com
kbdownload1-a.akamaihd.net
kbimages1-a.akamaihd.net
mobile.kobobooks.com
pool.ntp.org
script.hotjar.com
social.kobobooks.com
ssl.google-analytics.com
static.hotjar.com
stats.g.doubleclick.net
storeapi.kobo.com
vars.hotjar.com
www.google-analytics.com
www.google.com
www.google.fr
www.googletagmanager.com
www.msftncsi.comIt's not a big deal for me, but apparently it's a dealbreaker for some Kindle refugees that they can't start reading a sideloaded book on their phone and pick up where they left off when they open their Kobo.
Maybe other Kobo variants do better however.
Synching can be an issue. I had a one of the early kindles, and it was fine until I hit a few hundred items. It would re-index and be completely unresponsive for 10minutes at a go. That could have been done cloud side. In the end I decided I needed to purge loads of documents/titles to get it useful again. But accidentally sat on it. So game over. Moved to a simple Nook and SDCard loads.
It's easier to hold with dedicated page turn buttons, good lighting, and fast screen response time. Also water resistant and good battery life.
So far I've been able to get all the books I've wanted, mostly from the Kobo store, but it can work with any open format.
1. I can't highlight text across pages.
2. There's also an issue in which I navigate to some highlight and the text gets shown in a dark grey against black background, making it nearly impossible to read.
3. Since I can't highlight text properly (thanks to issue 1), I can't simply extract my highlights from a book, so I have to manually type it on a laptop, which is a painful experience thanks to issue #2.
Aluratech black and white https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e2WoVRsap9Q
No drm, suppported all formats, held a charge for a week. No internet. Fits in jeans pocket.
It came out in 2009... I wish they still made them.
If people reviewed some analytics solutions (many trials are available), then they'd see how pervasive this is and what product vendors are encouraging. The like's of Amazon have much more scrutiny around the use of data collected than those of smaller organizations. Obviously, they wield great market power so the concerns are broader, but an attacker has a much better chance of raiding smaller developers for volumes of data with much the same fidelity.
If you are using a device designed to market to you - they almost all run ads and collect analytics. I guess this is technically not a user facing feature, but it provides some user benefit (cheaper price).
Does anyone know sales breakdowns? If everyone is concerned about privacy / not being marketed too I guess the versions with ads are not selling. But I've been surprised not that marketing platforms collect data (authors website did) but that most users don't care about this "abuse" that the author is so concerned about.
Originally, I didn't realize this. I learned this when I'd pull out my phone in a waiting room, or on a train, only to not be anywhere near where I last read the book on my physical Kindle.
Now, I'm quite happy that Kindle syncs aggressively. I use an old phone to read in my hot tub, and it's great that the book opens up to the last place I read it, no matter which phone I'm using.
Perhaps I should do that myself.
Edit: You can request your kindle data here (UK version): https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/privacycentral/dsar/preview.html
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/amazon-ki...
I load all the books I get directly from my computer (Mostly from project Gutenberg).
Turning airplane mode on permanently now.
mobile-app-expan.amazon.com
cde-ta-g7g.amazon.com
Applying technical workarounds is still supporting a company, and is giving them a thumbs-up to keep at it.
I agree, generally. However, if you already have the hardware than it's wasteful to not make use of it.
It was sending an enormous amount of data back to the church including what the user was reading and for how long, everything the user highlighted or bookmarked etc.
It was enough to really question the need for such data.
I really believe that if that data served a legitimate purpose to the functionality of the app (which I’m sure a lot of it did) then the data should have been saved locally on the users device.
That said, the article appears to list activity type ( which is problematic in itself -- time stamp + person is reading now ). I can see a legitimate use for it, but I also hate the idea of being profiled in that way.
To be perfectly honest, Kindle does not seem to pull more than average Android phone ( thought that is problematic in itself ).
The character analytics stuff is probably contractual obligations they have to publishers. The publishers probably want to double check the way people read as well and ensure that they are paid out correctly.
The other logging, as someone else mentioned is probably analytics for their own product development.
But this kind of explains it, to me.
This is why I download e-books from the dark web and read them on an airgapped machine, free from The-eye-of-Amazon
It seems that the author is not really that surprised with the amount of data being collected.
Out of spite I added password to my wifi (I didn't have any and I even named my hotspot smth like "free" for my neighbors to use, wouldn't do that now).
To my surprise, some ~8months later I discovered my kindle to happily connect to my wifi. I'm pretty sure I would never enter the password there, because the kindle was the reason I added password to begin with. Maybe there is some more sane explanation than "kindle bruteforced my wifi", like a bug or some nuance in authorization protocol?
edit: it happened 7 years ago with kindle 2013 paperwhite.
It has no need to be sending that much data, including attempting to find out the local IP.
The article stated that a few seconds of usage sent 100 requests to Amazon servers. I'm fairly certain that most websites don't make quite as many requests as the tablet did.
I stand corrected. New Reddit made 150 requests in about 30 seconds, not counting images/media/html.
That being said, It's easy to block many of these with NoScript/uBlock Origin.
"Large corporation collects massive amounts of data, including data that could only be useful if trying to do something malicious on someone else's network."
Legitimate or not, it seems obvious that Amazon would be heavily monitoring device use, especially with the ad-supplemented devices.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
That doc also includes instructions for how to opt-out of this collection:
> you may opt out of processing of your personal data relating to the use of your Kindle e-reader collected by the operating system of that device ("device usage data") for marketing and product improvement purposes via All Settings > Device Options > Advanced Options > Privacy. If you turn this setting off, we will stop processing this device usage data for the purposes of serving you customized marketing offers and improving our products and features. Turning this setting off will not affect... your ability to use features of the device, such as data syncing or backup features or Special Offers we display if you purchased a device that includes Special Offers, as we will continue to collect and process your data to deliver those features to you
I'm interested to see whether this sort of biometric/behavioural data will ever be thought of as Personal Data under GDPR (since I bet you can identify someone from their browsing behaviour, just like you can using walking gait and typing cadence). If that was the case you'd need to present an opt-in when you first booted the device, which I think would resolve the complaints from most folks in this thread.
What! Why? What about all the other data?
> Each request also isn't sent as soon as it's generated. A number of these records are created and stored locally, then uploaded (note the sequence_number field). Even if a person is offline while reading, this data is stored and sent when reconnected.
That being said, if you leave airplane mode on permanently and sideload books, you should be fine.
This is a complete whataboutism but you gave Amazon a lot more information when you purchased the kindle from them.
I think the answer is Amazon should add an option to turn this off.
Kindles are sold in physical locations – at least in the EU, many Kindle owners got their device from a local electronics shop. You don't necessarily have to order them from Amazon. Then, when you unbox it, there is no requirement to register with Amazon or even connect to the internet at all.
thanks for sharing this
thankfully Kindle is not selling very much (relatively) so it is not a big issue if they collect a lot of data