Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

nullsweep.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 393 posts

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#371

Post by wodenokoto »

andrewzah wrote: post #24

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. On…

> One can remove DRM for amazon's ebook format (.azw3 ?) via some python scripts.

The fonts can be a pain to descramble though.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#373

Post by wongarsu »

edanm wrote: post #369
naikrovek wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analytics can be done less granularly and still benefit the user. Also, surely not every data point collected is used to benefit 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 ever…

> Analytics can be done less granularly and still benefit the user. Also, surely not every data point collected is used to benefit the user. 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.

The device could keep a daily count of interesting actions, and sync that to analytics servers on a daily or weekly basis. That preserves 95% of legitimate use cases while leaking much less private data (like how my reading habits are distributed across the day)

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#374

Post by edanm »

wongarsu wrote: post #373
edanm wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Analytics can be done less granularly and still benefit the user. Also, surely not every data point collected is used to benefit the user. 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.

The device could keep a daily count of interesting actions, and sync that to analytics servers on a daily or weekly basis. That preserves 95% of legitimate use cases while leaking much less private data (like how my reading habits are distributed across the day)

I mean, you're still collecting most of the problematic data. And you might legitimately be interested in what you're leaving out - knowing time of day that people do things is actually important for plenty of use cases.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#375

Post by 2rsf »

rumanator wrote: post #291
lwouis wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world-famous libre software is built without their developers study of massively collected usage data ("telemetry"). 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-…

> Most of the world-famous libre software is built without their developers study of massively collected usage data ("telemetry"). 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.

TBH the argument that it reinforce popular usage is a valid one, at MS we were taught again and again on how to design good experiments using telemetry but at the end it's hard to support changes when your data shows that something is working properly, and UI changes tend to produce a dip in usage or satisfaction graphs until they catch-up.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#376

Post by 2rsf »

neiman wrote: post #65
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.

How does it make a difference? 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…

Payment is a fair point on Kindles, I get why web sites offers free services in return to commercials (and your data) but I paid for my Kindle and (most of) the content I read.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#377

Post by thaumasiotes »

garblegarble wrote: post #319
boogies wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(off-topic) What’re the advantages of pihole over /etc/hosts?

>(off-topic) What’re the advantages of pihole over /etc/hosts? 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…

> It's good for cases exactly like this - devices where you don't have control over /etc/hosts

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#378

Post by thaumasiotes »

ballenf wrote: post #225
Hitton wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the article. If you are gonna update it, please consider also mentioning technical aspect. Frankly, Amazon snooping on users is to be expected, but short mention of app for which platform have you analysed using which tools would be welcome addition.

> Frankly, Amazon snooping on users is to be expected 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…

> But recording user's detailed interactions with every ebook? I hope that's a big surprise to your average Kindle user.

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

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#379

Post by thaumasiotes »

walton_simons wrote: post #274
JoshuaDavid wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Kin…

I've done this. Mine has been in aeroplane mode since the day I got it. I seem to remember having to allow it to connect to Amazon once when I first took it out of the box, but since then, no network connectivity at all, and zero problems as a result. It's been great. 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 Cali…

> Mine has been in aeroplane mode since the day I got it. I seem to remember having to allow it to connect to Amazon once when I first took it out of the box, but since then, no network connectivity at all, and zero problems as a result. It's been great.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#380

Post by Google234 »

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.

This is not true. What if for example you want to make a change to the dictionary feature because you imagine that it’s not useful and should be less prominently accessible. How would you measure if this is a good idea or not without tracking its use? This has nothing to do with business and everything to do with making the product better.
Post reply on HN