Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data • Hacker News Board

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#91

Post by belorn » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

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.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#92

Post by filesystem » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #63

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…

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.

Even if the developers take the egregious step of nerfing airplane mode, you can still "opt out" by not giving the device credentials for your WiFi network.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#93

Post by Shared404 » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

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.

Well, I tried browsing without NoScript for a little while.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#94

Post by pilsetnieks » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

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.

It's not about how it is used, it's about how it can be used (especially when a less benevolent entity gains access to it.)

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#95

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

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.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#96

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

BEEdwards wrote: post #87

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…

Why buy a kindle at all then? Any cheap budget tablet can read ebooks and stay off the internet.

Any cheap budget table isn't e-ink, which matters for battery life and, at least for some people, reading pleasure. Also, I mainly use my Kindle for reading research papers in academia, into the hundreds of publications each year. So, after years of using these devices its UI (which I find admirably simple and straightforward) is burned into my muscle memory. So, switching to another series of devices would mean having to adjust to a new workflow that may well bring unwelcome complexities.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#97

Post by vaylian » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

BEEdwards wrote: post #87

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…

Why buy a kindle at all then? Any cheap budget tablet can read ebooks and stay off the internet.

eInk is a lot nicer for reading books than LCD screens.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#98

Post by Shared404 » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

moksha256 wrote: post #60

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.

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)

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#99

Post by input_sh » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #29

mmrezaie wrote: post #2

How are the alternatives. Although i will miss my collection of books but I'm going to be in the market for the next ebook reader.

I just switched from my Kindle Paperwhite to the Kobo Libra H2O and I really like it. 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.

I've switched from Paperwhite to Kobo (Aura I think?) and the highlighting feature is really making me miss my Paperwhite.

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.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#100

Post by piokoch » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #63

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…

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 don't think they can - if they do this, Kindle would not be allowed in airplane cabin.