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Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

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Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#261

Post by jacquesm »

thdrdt wrote: post #131
jacquesm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 your comment is unfair. Every webserver logs the IP address and the URL visited. Do you think most people know this? Do deverlopers push against this?

No, not every webserver does. This is something that you could easily configure.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#262

Post by larrik »

danShumway wrote: post #209
falcolas wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you also be updating and noting that the requests to Wikipedia and Bing are for explicit customer-benefiting features? 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

The text in question: > 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?

On the iOS app it all appears instantly-ish when I highlight, so I'm guessing it's just the same codebase.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#263

Post by jjcon »

danShumway wrote: post #146
jjcon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you like it or not this collection does lead to better products - that is why you think every company does it because those that don’t usually die out. Understanding your users is vitally important. 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’

> Privacy LARPers 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.

> 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).

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#264

Post by benmller313 »

falcolas wrote: post #241
fouric wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a reason why that text needs to be sent before the user clicks the "translate" button? 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…

> 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.

Can we stop pretending that analytics don't explicitly benefit the user? Product Engineering organizations rely on analytics to improve user experiences.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#266

Post by DavideNL »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #21

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 ai…

> 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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#267

Post by iso1631 »

tgv wrote: post #73
Despoisj wrote: post #38

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.

IP address, country, goodread account details, each page turn, exact page location, etc., seem unnecessary for that.

Page location and page turn in there for syncing across devices, that's fine - ask the user 'sync across devices', if they say yes, not a problem. if they say no, don't send the data. Data that is stored would be something like 'currentlocation[$bookid] = $location'. Storing historical information (user was at location 1219 at 2020-01-06-05:12:41) is not required for that function.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#268

Post by iso1631 »

_jal wrote: post #121
Despoisj wrote: post #38

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.

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.

Almost all hardware and all software (especially software as a service) should be considered potentially hostile.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#269

Post by majormajor »

danShumway wrote: post #209
falcolas wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you also be updating and noting that the requests to Wikipedia and Bing are for explicit customer-benefiting features? 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

The text in question: > 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?

There isn't a "translate button" - the selection of the word i the button for define/translate/wiki. You swipe between the three cards.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#270

Post by iso1631 »

falcolas wrote: post #208
gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a matter of time before devices come with 5G data connections...

AKA, the original whispersync. Yup, this was once a thing - you didn't need wifi for sync or downloading books at all.

Kindles at one point apparently came with free cellular access

https://xkcd.com/548/

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