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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

#241

Post by falcolas »

fouric wrote: post #235
danShumway wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#242

Post by JoshuaDavid »

danShumway wrote: post #224
falcolas wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding - you can turn off analytics on your e-reader without giving up the kindle platform. It's also separate from whispersync (which can also be disabled independently).

Just for clarification -- is this something that actually turns off the collection itself? 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…

Kindles have airplane mode and allow you to load books onto them using the USB connection. The battery also lasts somewhat longer if you use them that way. Amazon directly offers a "Download & Transfer via USB" option for ebooks you purchase in their store, as well -- this is a relatively well-supported use case.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#243

Post by choward »

jjcon wrote: post #111
hohohn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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’

> Whether you like it or not this collection does lead to better products

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?

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#244

Post by choward »

jjj123 wrote: post #164
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’

There’s an important distinction to make: this tracking doesn’t necessarily lead to better products, it leads to better business metrics. Sometimes a better product comes out of better business metrics, but other times they’re directly opposed.

Exactly. At the end of the day it's about profit and not necessarily a better product. Sometimes more profit means making a better product for the end user.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#245

Post by bt1a »

irishloop wrote: post #85
lm28469 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've actually found it quite challenging to purchase books to put on my Kindle that aren't from Amazon, since they use a proprietary format.

You need to get Calibre!

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#246

Post by falcolas »

gambler wrote: post #221
falcolas wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sync is opt-in. 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.

>Sync is opt-in. 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-di…

Crud, I read that wrong; you're correct in that it's opt-out.

That said, given that it provides a high value to the end user (I use it daily), I personally don't mind.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#247

Post by eclipxe »

Shared404 wrote: post #98
moksha256 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> the "invasive" data mentioned in the post doesn't seem particularly invasive to me[.] 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)

What, exactly, will that do for them?

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#248

Post by eclipxe »

Shared404 wrote: post #68
jihadjihad wrote: post #16

Just wait until they learn about the "behavioral reading" data collected by, oh I don't know, virtually every media site on the Internet.

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.

Who cares if your local IP is sent somewhere?!??

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#249

Post by jjcon »

neiman wrote: post #151
jjcon wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think companies should loudly advertise something people don’t care about? That doesn’t make sense. 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.

> You think companies should loudly advertise something people don’t care about? It's not what I said.

> why don't they loudly advertise the data collection
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