This statement - "None of these requests appear to be used for customer features like last read location." - bugs me, because it's fairly obviously false, and detracts from the real concerns.
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?
I mention that the data that appears to be used for those purposes is sent again in a separate request to a separate end point, so we have two types of requests: last read location, and reading analytics. Sorry it wasn't clear, I'll try to improve the wording.
I believe page location analytics are used for the amount of money that goes to Kindle Unlimited authors, also.
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.
I think the reason to send a sync every page turn is you don’t know if the device will be in contact when any alternate sync trigger happens so to keep it mostly up to date the best option is to constantly sync whenever you have connectivity.
I honestly don't mind the FUD as long as user don't have options. Amazon deserves the bad press in that case. Kindle is an awesome screen reader, but such features make it a bad device. A good device just had an option "sync usage data to Amazon account" <yes/no>. People suggest it is a technical impossibility.
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.
In isolation, "last read page" could surely be E2E encrypted. Amazon would know that I'm using a Kindle app or device, but everything else could be opaque.
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.
Can't you do lost of those things by sending encrypted data to Amazon, and getting back the encrypted data from them? They act as a storage in most cases, not as a server, no?
>the location data doesn't need to be sent with every page turn, for example
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.
>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.
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.
The aggravating bit - beyond the fact that Amazon doesn't let you opt out, is that this sometimes affects performance. Switching over to the kindle app occasionally hangs. Killing the app and restarting it usually works, but there are times when I have to go to airplane mode and kill and restart the app just to open a book!
As a former Kindle developer, I can say that 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.
This allows the teams to focus on features that are actively used, and sometimes lead to discontinuing features that see little to no use.
Hope that helps.
That's how every company rationalizes the mass collection of user data. "Oh lets collect many terabytes of every user-action in case we need to one day discontinue a feature".
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.
It doesn't really matter does it? You don't collect data without consent, period.
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.
I think the privacy-concerned end-user thinks, "Yes, I completely understand why this information is being tracked and how it would be useful to Amazon. But I still don't like it."
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.
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.
I don't think that will ease anyone with privacy concerns. People who are against government surveillance is not against the police catching criminals and solving cold murder cases. The Golden State Killer case was a very good use of DNA profiling and DNA databases being used to catch a criminal. The problem is that many don't trust the government to only use it for those cases, and many others don't trust the technology to have a low enough false positive rate to not cause harm to innocent people.
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.
The primary way that helps is to communicate that everyone on the team appeared to think this is perfectly acceptable to do without communicating it to the paying customer.
I mean, we already knew this, but it means any and all Amazon hardware must be considered potentially hostile.
They have collected large amounts of data from pretty much day one on those devices.
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."
A Kindle comes with Kindlings, a lesser form of the book, where you are being read by Amazon while reading; you are working for Amazon in ways you might never understand.
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.
Yeah I came here to say the same. I'm about as tin-foil-paranoid-privacy-all-the-things as they come, but the "invasive" data mentioned in the post don't seem particularly invasive to me, and collecting that data seems perfectly appropriate for the purposes you mentioned.
With all that said, I do dream of a PINE64 E Ink device (or something that's open and hackable).
There are some features in software I rarely use. But those times I do use them they are utterly essential. If I find such feature has been removed I am incensed.
As a developer, that is how _your dev team_ used the data. Can you confidently say that the metrics weren't also being accessed by the marketing department for different purposes? Or that it wasn't being shared with Amazon's business partners?
I have quite often seen people here and on other tech forums assume that purchasing a Kindle means being locked into Amazon's ecosystem, giving up personal details, and having the risk that your books might be deleted. But you don't have to use the Kindle's internet connectivity: I have owned three generations of Kindle, and with each one I activated airplane mode the second I unboxed the device and I never turned airplane mode off. All my ebooks come from sources other than Amazon (mainly LibGen, for example), and they can be easily transferred over to the Kindle by USB because the Kindle appears as any ordinary USB drive to a computer.
If this practice ever get wide spread I would guess that the developers will limit airplane mode in someway in order to ensure that the device will call home at some point.
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.
I have also owned three generations of Kindle! Like you, I've never taken any of them online.
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.
Same here (sans the Kindle). All eBook readers I have bought have never been connected to a WiFi network.
If I want to change the books, i do it via USB.
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":
> I activated airplane mode the second I unboxed the device and I never turned airplane mode off.
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.
Same, although I just have the one old Kindle that I revived with a new battery. It's never had a network connection since I factory reset it. I just dump ebooks onto it via USB. It might be recording all sorts of analytics but I don't care because it'll never be connected to the outside world.
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.
I just tend to use non-Kindle applications/devices for this. It's always been extremely easy to get non-DRM ebooks into Apple's book reading app (formerly iBooks, now just Books, in Apple's ongoing quest to make most of their application names as boring as possible). Perhaps ironically this makes Books the "non-walled-garden" app for me.
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.
Would you agree that your usage pattern of the device is very atypical? I suspect (no hard evidence) tat 99% of Kindle purchasers use them primarily to read Amazon Kindle books.
This is a bit unfortunate, because the kindle paperwhite is just phenomenal. It's easy on my eyes and it's a godsend for traveling. I suppose the solution here is to just keep it in offline mode when not syncing books.
[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.
> 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 can remove DRM for amazon's ebook format (.azw3 ?) via some python scripts. You didn't hear it from me though.
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 .
This is only one reason why I absolutely love my Kobo Aura HD, it's never been connected to WiFi. Its storage device is a standard SD card which can be swapped for a larger one. Oh, and it's not giving money to Amazon which is always a big win for me.
It also happens to be a super nice piece of kit, and it has my warmest recommendations.
That's a sensible approach, but sadly Kobo probably does something similar for those who are less savvy than you:
> 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".
My kindle is in airplane mode since I opened its box and I send books to it via usb. No one is forcing you to use amazon services, I didn't even pay for the ad free version but I've never seen an ad.
I'm sure someone like me always has the same "hot take" in every thread regarding this, but I honestly still love reading physical books. After spending a day weary of interacting with screens all day, there is something nice about tapping in to this activity that humans have done for hundreds of years. Sure, e-ink is easier on the eyes, but isolating myself with a good book can be a near spiritual experience.
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 love reading physical books too, the user experience of them is so much nicer.
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.
It would be quite interesting to know how this data is actually used on Amazon's servers. It reminds me of the criticisms of government data collection programs, that they just hoover up every bit of data that's available without actually knowing what to do with it. Suppose you train some AI to predict what pages in a book will be most engaging to the reader. Since your interface to the book is still just going to be something where people can turn the pages what are you actually going to do with that information? It's a massive sacrifice of the privacy of the user for small gains at best in getting insight into the user's behavior. I wouldn't be surprised if this information is sitting in a database somewhere at Amazon completely unused.
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 formed my opinion before clicking the article, already working out some comments in my mind like "who's surprised?" After reading the article though, surprisingly my opinion changed. This doesn't seem all that bad. I don't doubt that Amazon is over-collecting, but the samples he posted seem like it's just information for syncing reading position and settings. Of all the nefarious things Amazon does with data, I don't think that's one of them.
I did some research on early Android sending a bunch of data back to Google's servers, a few months later the information was encoded/encrypted before being sent over the wire. I'd be curious if the next app version of Kindle started obfuscating what it was sending back home.
Why would you leave on wifi on an e-ink kindle, when not actively downloading a book? The battery lasts 3-4x as long with it disabled (on my 3rd gen device at least).
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...
> Why would you leave on wifi on an e-ink kindle, when not actively downloading a book? The battery lasts 3-4x as long with it disabled (on my 3rd gen device at least).
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.
> Why would you leave on wifi on an e-ink kindle, when not actively downloading a book?
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.
I’m not surprised, but I suggest the Kobo e-reader to the OP. Can use multiple formats, easy to upload books to it, and some models have expandable memory. You can completely disconnect it from the internet if you want.
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.
> Unfortunately, in order to use a non-Kindle application, I have to buy DRM-Free books
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.
I use my Kindle Paperwhite completely offline. I factory reset it and haven't connected it to WiFi since and just side load what I need(I did have to strip the DRM from my Kindle books to side load them on the unregistered device). I never really used the online features when it was registered previously and kept it in airplane mode to help with batter life. Another bonus is that if a freshly reset Kindle never connects to the internet, you never get the ads.
Kobo's have comparable (even superior, IMO) hardware to the Kindle line. The thing that everyone who migrates from Kindle to Kobo seems to get hung up on is that it does not have an option to wirelessly sync books that have been sideloaded across devices. This is because Kobo does not give everyone a private cloud like Amazon does (I imagine it would be prohibitively expensive to do so for anyone but Amazon).
It'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.
Though I haven't analyzed other devices (because I don't own them), they could easily have similar issues. I personally really want an open e-ink device, but I haven't seen one for sale unfortunately. For now, I do Calibre ODPS server with Marvin app on a phone, but it doesn't really compare.
I have an Onyx Nova 2 and I like it quite a lot. It runs android and has access to the android ecosystem, so I can read my webnovels and mangas and even kindle books without needing to use any external applications like Calibre.
Got my mother-in-law a Kobo Forma. Relatively pricey but I was able to walk her through how to check out a book from her local library via Cloud Library & transfer it to her device. Was a life-saver while the physical library was closed due to Covid-19. I was a little concerned as there were complaints about fabrication but her experience has been very positive.
Would love to replace my Kindle with another device. Any recommendations? - Also, I appreciate a local file on the Kindle that logs all my highlights (this file is called `My Clippings.txt‘. I parse that file and have a wonderful summary of the books I read. Any other ebook reader that creates a file like that?
It will make people uncomfortable, but this is standard practice in terms of event collection for analytics. Many articles here write about discovery from the side of a particular app or site.
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.
Some users also buy a Kindle which is subsidized by ads? I pay to avoid this and change privacy settings..
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.
The early Kindles didn't do this. It used to annoy me to no end that I'd have to manually tell my Kindle to sync when I was done reading.
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.
I can't find a reference to it now, but I recently read something referencing the massive quantities of kindle data amazon give you when making a GDPR data subject access request. I think it was something like 100k rows of data for one user.
Are these requests sent to a separate domain? I may have missed it in the article but it’d be great to know whether we could null route these without disrupting functionality.
I’ve found similar concerns in an official church scripture app which I will not name.
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.
As much dang money as Amazon makes off kindle, why are they also spying? I guess "because they can" will always be a useful refrain, but I really wish there was plain english version of what information they collect at any given company/web app/mobile app/OS kind of like the attorney general's warning. Not something that is 20 miles long with legalese that any non-attorney can decypher
After I put Pihole on the network, wife's kindle was almost immediately the biggest offender.
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 ).
I have a 2015 Kindle Paperwhite. I've put it on flight mode the day it arrived and it never went online again. Yes, loading new books takes slightly more effort (I use USB transfer with Calibre) but the peace of mind I get is more than worth it. Unlike OP, Amazon can neither track my reading habits (beyond my ebook purchases) nor delete anything from my Kindle.
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.
I was always curious why Amazon's Dynamo was co-developed for Kindle. Kindle didn't seem like the sort of product that required its own scale-free key-value store. An object store, certainly (for the books themselves); and maybe a relatively-mundane sharded key-value store, for read positions.
Amazon loses when users take the discounted kindle, never enable wifi and source books from libgen. These users would be addressing their privacy concerns and saving money. Perhaps it isn't the largest market, but Amazon isn't exactly incentivizing participation with these privacy policies.
So one way to avoid all data gathering might be to keep your Kindle on airplane mode permanently and load/remove books via USB. Battery would last longer too. It also kills ads on the cheaper version of the Kindle.
What is the surprise? Who doesn't collect data? As long as that data is anonymized and used for improving their product(s), I am fine. It will be scary if the data is used for selling ads/data itself.
I had a funny situation with kindle. It was connecting to the internet all the time, I enabled airplane mode and then it started complaining about it all the time.
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.
Our local library does drive up pick up. Obviously not as instant as a download... but man it is nice to leave the house for a few minutes. Kills two birds with one stone.
The biggest difference in my mind is that the Kindle is hardware you purchase.
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.
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.
> 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.
> you gave Amazon a lot more information when you purchased the kindle from them.
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.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
falcolas|5 years ago
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
BCharlie|5 years ago
crooked-v|5 years ago
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.
rtkwe|5 years ago
raxxorrax|5 years ago
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.
samatman|5 years ago
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.
neiman|5 years ago
notatoad|5 years ago
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.
grawprog|5 years ago
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.
gambler|5 years ago
technofiend|5 years ago
Despoisj|5 years ago
breakfastduck|5 years ago
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.
hohohn|5 years ago
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.
jacquesm|5 years ago
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.
AdmiralAsshat|5 years ago
ethbro|5 years ago
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.
neiman|5 years ago
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.
belorn|5 years ago
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.
tgv|5 years ago
Kaze404|5 years ago
_jal|5 years ago
I mean, we already knew this, but it means any and all Amazon hardware must be considered potentially hostile.
pilsetnieks|5 years ago
sumtechguy|5 years ago
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."
api|5 years ago
zxcb1|5 years ago
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.
raxxorrax|5 years ago
moksha256|5 years ago
With all that said, I do dream of a PINE64 E Ink device (or something that's open and hackable).
gvjddbnvdrbv|5 years ago
Usefulness is NOT the same as usage.
djsumdog|5 years ago
whoopdedo|5 years ago
Mediterraneo10|5 years ago
belorn|5 years ago
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.
pwinnski|5 years ago
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.
Tepix|5 years ago
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":
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=205224
DavideNL|5 years ago
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.
BEEdwards|5 years ago
Any cheap budget tablet can read ebooks and stay off the internet.
taneq|5 years ago
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.
cpach|5 years ago
kilroy123|5 years ago
chipotle_coyote|5 years ago
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.
PeterStuer|5 years ago
fsflover|5 years ago
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056, see "Significant locations"
Kaze404|5 years ago
andrewzah|5 years ago
[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.
wombatmobile|5 years ago
BorisTheBrave|5 years ago
Keeping it in offline mode doesn't help.
callmeal|5 years ago
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 .
wodenokoto|5 years ago
The fonts can be a pain to descramble though.
dusted|5 years ago
tweetle_beetle|5 years ago
> 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".
[1] https://authorize.kobo.com/terms/privacypolicy
lm28469|5 years ago
uberman|5 years ago
techer|5 years ago
What isn’t collecting “too much” data at this point?
badRNG|5 years ago
breakfastduck|5 years ago
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'!
pwinnski|5 years ago
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.
slipheen|5 years ago
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.
agentultra|5 years ago
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.
wombatmobile|5 years ago
greentimer|5 years ago
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.
Timpy|5 years ago
client4|5 years ago
zdw|5 years ago
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...
Shared404|5 years ago
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.
AdmiralAsshat|5 years ago
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.
johnisgood|5 years ago
torgian|5 years ago
dade_|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
parksy|5 years ago
"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.
willvarfar|5 years ago
But this doesn't actually surprise anybody, right?
bambax|5 years ago
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.
bsharitt|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
mmrezaie|5 years ago
Reventlov|5 years ago
The domain I extracted for my kobo aura:
AdmiralAsshat|5 years ago
It'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.
MattPalmer1086|5 years ago
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.
BCharlie|5 years ago
jabroni_salad|5 years ago
anotherboffin|5 years ago
roter|5 years ago
wolco|5 years ago
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.
bwilliams|5 years ago
submeta|5 years ago
zerkten|5 years ago
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.
donor20|5 years ago
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.
gwbas1c|5 years ago
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.
bitdivision|5 years ago
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
bitdivision|5 years ago
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/amazon-ki...
rubidium|5 years ago
I load all the books I get directly from my computer (Mostly from project Gutenberg).
Turning airplane mode on permanently now.
paranorman|5 years ago
mrspeaker|5 years ago
Applying technical workarounds is still supporting a company, and is giving them a thumbs-up to keep at it.
BCharlie|5 years ago
badRNG|5 years ago
sloshnmosh|5 years ago
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.
stjohnswarts|5 years ago
A4ET8a8uTh0|5 years ago
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 ).
calcifer|5 years ago
sentinel|5 years ago
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.
derefr|5 years ago
But this kind of explains it, to me.
aww_dang|5 years ago
blindm|5 years ago
This is why I download e-books from the dark web and read them on an airgapped machine, free from The-eye-of-Amazon
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
sasaf5|5 years ago
It seems that the author is not really that surprised with the amount of data being collected.
stormdennis|5 years ago
the_arun|5 years ago
m4tthumphrey|5 years ago
synackrst|5 years ago
frankie_t|5 years ago
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.
simonswords82|5 years ago
MobileVet|5 years ago
rvrabec|5 years ago
jihadjihad|5 years ago
Shared404|5 years ago
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.
biophysboy|5 years ago
jacknews|5 years ago
Legitimate or not, it seems obvious that Amazon would be heavily monitoring device use, especially with the ad-supplemented devices.
aftergibson|5 years ago
theptip|5 years ago
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.
TedDoesntTalk|5 years ago
What! Why? What about all the other data?
sdsvsdgggggg|5 years ago
WalterBright|5 years ago
nikbackm|5 years ago
Shared404|5 years ago
> 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.
DNied|5 years ago
dt3ft|5 years ago
agarzenm|5 years ago
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.
Mediterraneo10|5 years ago
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.
1nikoalvin1|5 years ago
switch11|5 years ago
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
unknown|5 years ago
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jarinflation|5 years ago
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altdatathrow|5 years ago
7leafer|5 years ago
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