54 ms·

Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

545 points by BCharlie 6y ago

m4tthumphrey 6y ago
OT: What is the app used in the screenshot to capture the HTTP requests?
- synackrst 6y ago
  Looks like mitmproxy -- https://mitmproxy.org/posts/releases/mitmproxy5/ https://mitmproxy.org/posts/releases/mitmproxy5/ .
mmrezaie 6y ago
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.
- BCharlie 6y ago
  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.
- Reventlov 6y ago
  I wrote https://remy.grunblatt.org/blog/kobo-aura-h2o-hacking.html https://remy.grunblatt.org/blog/kobo-aura-h2o-hacking.html a while ago. At some point it sent ISBN to google. The domain I extracted for my kobo aura: api.ipinfodb.com api.kobobooks.com auth.kobobooks.com authorize.kobo.com kbdownload1-a.akamaihd.net kbimages1-a.akamaihd.net mobile.kobobooks.com pool.ntp.org script.hotjar.com social.kobobooks.com ssl.google-analytics.com static.hotjar.com stats.g.doubleclick.net storeapi.kobo.com vars.hotjar.com www.google-analytics.com www.google.com www.google.fr www.googletagmanager.com www.msftncsi.com
  - dddw 6y ago
    Nice, thanks for that writeup
- anotherboffin 6y ago
  I don’t know the alternatives, but do know you have software like Calibre in order to keep your book collection despite changing your device.
- roter 6y ago
  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.
- bwilliams 6y ago
  Feels somewhat abandoned at times, but Apple Books is okay.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  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.
  - fouc 6y ago
    I have a $350 Kobo Forma and the UI is so slow compared to my $200 Kindle. It takes a long time to startup and it has horrible & slow touch detection which makes it really hard to highlight quotes properly. Maybe other Kobo variants do better however.
  - sweatpants 6y ago
    I don't see why that should be expensive/difficult. Ebooks are mostly small files. It would be hard to ramp up a gigabyte unless you end up with image laden items such as pdfs. Synching can be an issue. I had a one of the early kindles, and it was fine until I hit a few hundred items. It would re-index and be completely unresponsive for 10minutes at a go. That could have been done cloud side. In the end I decided I needed to purge loads of documents/titles to get it useful again. But accidentally sat on it. So game over. Moved to a simple Nook and SDCard loads.
- MattPalmer1086 6y ago
  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.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    What drove you to abandon your Kindle Paperwhite, MattPalmer1086?
    - MattPalmer1086 6y ago
      The battery stopped holding its charge, so I looked around. I particularly wanted open formats, and I've been getting away from Amazon in general.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    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.
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  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.
  - thekyle 6y ago
    I read this comment on my Nova 2. It's a very nice capable device for tasks like web browsing, email, and note taking (either with the pen or Bluetooth keyboard).
- wolco 6y ago
  My favourite ebook reader is: Aluratech black and white https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e2WoVRsap9Q 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.
paranorman 6y ago
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.
- BCharlie 6y ago
  That's a great idea! It looks like the 'bad' stuff goes to unagi-na.amazon.com
  - paranorman 6y ago
    Awesome, thanks for the quick reply. I'll add this to my pihole config.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - eterps 6y ago
    Exactly, I also added: mobile-app-expan.amazon.com cde-ta-g7g.amazon.com
- badRNG 6y ago
  Probably worth adding to the PiHole
  - paranorman 6y ago
    My thoughts exactly!
- mrspeaker 6y ago
  I reckon it's time to stop working around all data collection bullshit. No more technical solutions to political problems. Applying technical workarounds is still supporting a company, and is giving them a thumbs-up to keep at it.
  - 6y ago
willvarfar 6y ago
Fascinating investigation and good article. But this doesn't actually surprise anybody, right?
uberman 6y ago
I think you mean "Predictably" rather than "Surprisingly".
- techer 6y ago
  “Obviously”. What isn’t collecting “too much” data at this point?
bitdivision 6y ago
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. 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 https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/privacycentral/dsar/preview.html
- bitdivision 6y ago
  I still can't find the original post I read, but the guardian wrote about this recently [1] [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/amazon-kindle-data-reading-tracking-privacy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/amazon-ki...
badRNG 6y ago
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.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  I agree. 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'!
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  Yes, and once read, books can stay with you on the shelves you live with in your habitat, reminding you who you are and what you know and believe.
- slipheen 6y ago
  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.
  - dhosek 6y ago
    I have great spatial memory for things I've read. I was able to pull up a quote from a book that I read the summer of 1992 seven years later because I remembered roughly where in the book and on the page the quote appeared. I could probably go to my library and find it still another 21 years later. I don't get that from e-books.
MobileVet 6y ago
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.
jihadjihad 6y ago
Just wait until they learn about the "behavioral reading" data collected by, oh I don't know, virtually every media site on the Internet.
- Shared404 6y ago
  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.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    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.
  - eclipxe 6y ago
    Who cares if your local IP is sent somewhere?!??
    - Shared404 6y ago
      Okay lets rephrase it as: "Large corporation collects massive amounts of data, including data that could only be useful if trying to do something malicious on someone else's network."
client4 6y ago
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.
torgian 6y ago
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.
- dade_ 6y ago
  There is also alternative open source firmware available for Kobo devices: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
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.
- cpach 6y ago
  What formats does it handle? Can it handle EPUB for example?
  - benologist 6y ago
    There are online converters for it all, the process is a little annoying but works fine and you can do it locally too with various tools: https://www.epubconverter.com/epub-to-mobi-converter/ https://www.epubconverter.com/epub-to-mobi-converter/
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    The Kindle handles .mobi and .azw3. It is trivial to convert EPUB to MOBI before you send the book to the device over USB (it can even be done as part of a command-line script, for example).
    - anilakar 6y ago
      Having to deal with the .epub conversion was the main reason I ditched my Voyage and got a Kobo Aura One instead.
      - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        Why ditch a device just for that reason? Again, the OP assumes that one will transfer books to the device over USB for privacy’s sake. In this case, creating a shell wrapper around cp to automatically convert any EPUB to MOBI upon copying the file (naming the command, say, kindlecp) is trivial.
zdw 6y ago
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...
- Shared404 6y ago
  > 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.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  > 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.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    You don't need internet connectivity on the Kindle to look up a word in a dictionary. The Kindle supports dictionaries in Mobipocket format, so the dictionary lives right on the device. It is easy to find .mobi dictionaries for major languages freely available from torrent communities. Using the Kindle's Wikipedia function actually requires going through Amazon's servers and is a privacy violation, so I would not recommend users do that.
- johnisgood 6y ago
  Mine does not even have wifi. I prefer it that way.
andrewzah 6y ago
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.
- BorisTheBrave 6y 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. Keeping it in offline mode doesn't help.
  - calcifer 6y ago
    > Keeping it in offline mode doesn't help. Permanently keeping it offline and only transferring via USB does.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  https://alexwlchan.net/2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kindle-books/ https://alexwlchan.net/2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kind...
- callmeal 6y ago
  >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 .
  - doc_gunthrop 6y ago
    Apparently you can do the conversion with Calibre.[1] 1: https://epubor.com/how-to-convert-kindle-kfx-to-epubpdfmobi-with-calibre.html https://epubor.com/how-to-convert-kindle-kfx-to-epubpdfmobi-...
rubidium 6y ago
Kindle is a great tech (e-ink) with a terribly expensive ecosystem (amazon store) for books. I load all the books I get directly from my computer (Mostly from project Gutenberg). Turning airplane mode on permanently now.
nikbackm 6y ago
Just use airplane mode? Will also increase the battery life.
- Shared404 6y ago
  From the article: > 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.
Despoisj 6y ago
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.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  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."
  - neiman 6y ago
    As a freedom-concerned citizen, I always completely understood the policies and methodology of dictators and tyrants, and how what they do is useful for them.
    - jjcon 6y ago
      Quit LARPing - Amazon isn’t trying to take over the world by tracking how often you use the bookmark feature.
  - Legogris 6y ago
    Or "It's all fine and dandy today, but what about in x years when there's a new person/group with different incentives in charge?"
- api 6y ago
  Privacy concerns are usually about how information could be misused, not how it's used right now or routinely.
- m52go 6y ago
  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).
calcifer 6y ago
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.
zerkten 6y ago
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.
dusted 6y ago
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.
- lm28469 6y ago
  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.
  - irishloop 6y ago
    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.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      > 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. While MOBI began as one's company's proprietary solution, the format is well over a decade old now and quite well understood by the Free Software community. Calibre can convert EPUB (or anything else, really) to MOBI, so you can buy or pirate your ebooks from anywhere and easily put them on a Kindle.
    - pqb 6y ago
      I would say exactly the opposite. I regret of buying a book from Amazon [0] dedicated to Kindle-use, because it is DRM protected and I am forced to use "Amazon Kindle" application, otherwise I cannot open it. I am usually okay with DRMs but I miss a fact I haven't bought it elsewhere with less annoying protection. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321 https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications... Psst, "Designing Data Intensive Applications" was very good read. Do you know similar books that focus on distributed systems?
Timpy 6y ago
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.
agarzenm 6y ago
Maybe I am getting less fervent about privacy and data security but I don't see these metrics as PII. 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 6y ago
  > 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.
jacknews 6y ago
Surprisingly? Legitimate or not, it seems obvious that Amazon would be heavily monitoring device use, especially with the ad-supplemented devices.
dt3ft 6y ago
As a shareholder, this is disappointing to read.
greentimer 6y ago
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.
submeta 6y ago
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?
frankie_t 6y ago
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.
falcolas 6y ago
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? 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
- neiman 6y ago
  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?
  - falcolas 6y ago
    You'd have to figure out some kind of secure key sharing mechanism between phones, tablets, web browsers, and e-readers. Or, you can trust that a position in a book (bookmarks, notes, etc.) is not sensitive information that really needs to be encrypted. This is my - perhaps overly pragmatic - position.
    - criddell 6y ago
      I think the books you read and your annotations should definitely be protected. Imagine reading about Tienanmen Square in China.
sdsvsdgggggg 6y ago
What irks me about it is that Amazon doesn't give me access to that data.
simonswords82 6y ago
Given how data driven Amazon is this is not really a surprise, is it?
bsharitt 6y ago
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.
stormdennis 6y ago
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.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> The local IP is the only item on here that bothers me What! Why? What about all the other data?
aww_dang 6y ago
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.
sloshnmosh 6y ago
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.
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
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 ).
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blindm 6y ago
This is why I am skeptical of Kindle. It's Orwellian to know all the details of a person's reading habits, and all the minutia of a reading session. This is why I download e-books from the dark web and read them on an airgapped machine, free from The-eye-of-Amazon
derefr 6y ago
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. But this kind of explains it, to me.
sentinel 6y ago
That doesn't seem like a large amount of data. 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.
rvrabec 6y ago
Cool investigation. Thanks for sharing. Have you analyzed what data Marvin collects in each session? Before switching I'd want to see a comparison.
bambax 6y ago
> 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.
theptip 6y ago
This is covered in the terms of service (you read those before using the device, right?): https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GQFYXZHZB2H629WN 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.
deleted 6y ago
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the_arun 6y ago
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.
biophysboy 6y ago
Most of the time my Kindle is on airplane mode - does anybody know if my Kindle will still send this data later all at once, when the wifi is on?
parksy 6y ago
I tried to read the first link in the article, the link in the sentence "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-the-kindle-5317703 https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-th... to https://www.gizmodo.com.au/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703?r=US 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.
altdatathrow 6y ago
How was this achieved? I didn’t realize a Kindle supported HTTP proxys or installing root certs?
aftergibson 6y ago
Can anyone provide a viable open source or non-privacy invasive alternative that isn’t something I need to assemble myself?
jarinflation 6y ago
I love my Kindle I went from the voyage where I eventually destroyed the screen by accident to the oasis (32gb is amazing!). I was always fully aware of the privacy issues, so I only ever used it in airplane mode. None of my kindles have ever been on wifi/3g. I can still buy kindle ebooks and even do software upgrades, all offline, so it never bothered me.
deleted 6y ago
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donor20 6y ago
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.
sasaf5 6y ago
> The local IP is the only item on here that bothers me, though I couldn't find any other local network information that would be problematic. It seems that the author is not really that surprised with the amount of data being collected.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
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
WalterBright 6y ago
I just turn off the Kindle's wifi unless I actually need it.
switch11 6y ago
an interesting article 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
1nikoalvin1 6y ago
definitely going to be selling my kindle now...
gwbas1c 6y ago
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.
DNied 6y ago
How is anyone still using a Kindle after the 1984 scandal?
7leafer 6y ago
SURPRISINGLY

545 points by BCharlie 6y ago

m4tthumphrey 6y ago

OT: What is the app used in the screenshot to capture the HTTP requests?

synackrst 6y ago
Looks like mitmproxy -- https://mitmproxy.org/posts/releases/mitmproxy5/ https://mitmproxy.org/posts/releases/mitmproxy5/ .

mmrezaie 6y ago

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.

BCharlie 6y ago
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.
Reventlov 6y ago
I wrote https://remy.grunblatt.org/blog/kobo-aura-h2o-hacking.html https://remy.grunblatt.org/blog/kobo-aura-h2o-hacking.html a while ago. At some point it sent ISBN to google. The domain I extracted for my kobo aura: api.ipinfodb.com api.kobobooks.com auth.kobobooks.com authorize.kobo.com kbdownload1-a.akamaihd.net kbimages1-a.akamaihd.net mobile.kobobooks.com pool.ntp.org script.hotjar.com social.kobobooks.com ssl.google-analytics.com static.hotjar.com stats.g.doubleclick.net storeapi.kobo.com vars.hotjar.com www.google-analytics.com www.google.com www.google.fr www.googletagmanager.com www.msftncsi.com
- dddw 6y ago
  Nice, thanks for that writeup
anotherboffin 6y ago
I don’t know the alternatives, but do know you have software like Calibre in order to keep your book collection despite changing your device.
roter 6y ago
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.
bwilliams 6y ago
Feels somewhat abandoned at times, but Apple Books is okay.
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
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.
- fouc 6y ago
  I have a $350 Kobo Forma and the UI is so slow compared to my $200 Kindle. It takes a long time to startup and it has horrible & slow touch detection which makes it really hard to highlight quotes properly. Maybe other Kobo variants do better however.
- sweatpants 6y ago
  I don't see why that should be expensive/difficult. Ebooks are mostly small files. It would be hard to ramp up a gigabyte unless you end up with image laden items such as pdfs. Synching can be an issue. I had a one of the early kindles, and it was fine until I hit a few hundred items. It would re-index and be completely unresponsive for 10minutes at a go. That could have been done cloud side. In the end I decided I needed to purge loads of documents/titles to get it useful again. But accidentally sat on it. So game over. Moved to a simple Nook and SDCard loads.
MattPalmer1086 6y ago
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.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  What drove you to abandon your Kindle Paperwhite, MattPalmer1086?
  - MattPalmer1086 6y ago
    The battery stopped holding its charge, so I looked around. I particularly wanted open formats, and I've been getting away from Amazon in general.
- input_sh 6y ago
  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.
jabroni_salad 6y ago
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.
- thekyle 6y ago
  I read this comment on my Nova 2. It's a very nice capable device for tasks like web browsing, email, and note taking (either with the pen or Bluetooth keyboard).
wolco 6y ago
My favourite ebook reader is: Aluratech black and white https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e2WoVRsap9Q 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.

paranorman 6y ago

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.

BCharlie 6y ago
That's a great idea! It looks like the 'bad' stuff goes to unagi-na.amazon.com
- paranorman 6y ago
  Awesome, thanks for the quick reply. I'll add this to my pihole config.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- eterps 6y ago
  Exactly, I also added: mobile-app-expan.amazon.com cde-ta-g7g.amazon.com
badRNG 6y ago
Probably worth adding to the PiHole
- paranorman 6y ago
  My thoughts exactly!
mrspeaker 6y ago
I reckon it's time to stop working around all data collection bullshit. No more technical solutions to political problems. Applying technical workarounds is still supporting a company, and is giving them a thumbs-up to keep at it.
- 6y ago

willvarfar 6y ago

Fascinating investigation and good article. But this doesn't actually surprise anybody, right?

uberman 6y ago

I think you mean "Predictably" rather than "Surprisingly".

techer 6y ago
“Obviously”. What isn’t collecting “too much” data at this point?

bitdivision 6y ago

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. 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 https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/privacycentral/dsar/preview.html

bitdivision 6y ago
I still can't find the original post I read, but the guardian wrote about this recently [1] [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/amazon-kindle-data-reading-tracking-privacy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/amazon-ki...

badRNG 6y ago

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.

breakfastduck 6y ago
I agree. 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'!
wombatmobile 6y ago
Yes, and once read, books can stay with you on the shelves you live with in your habitat, reminding you who you are and what you know and believe.
slipheen 6y ago
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.
- dhosek 6y ago
  I have great spatial memory for things I've read. I was able to pull up a quote from a book that I read the summer of 1992 seven years later because I remembered roughly where in the book and on the page the quote appeared. I could probably go to my library and find it still another 21 years later. I don't get that from e-books.

MobileVet 6y ago

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.

jihadjihad 6y ago

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

Shared404 6y ago
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.
- Shared404 6y ago
  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.
- eclipxe 6y ago
  Who cares if your local IP is sent somewhere?!??
  - Shared404 6y ago
    Okay lets rephrase it as: "Large corporation collects massive amounts of data, including data that could only be useful if trying to do something malicious on someone else's network."

client4 6y ago

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.

torgian 6y ago

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.

dade_ 6y ago
There is also alternative open source firmware available for Kobo devices: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

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.

cpach 6y ago
What formats does it handle? Can it handle EPUB for example?
- benologist 6y ago
  There are online converters for it all, the process is a little annoying but works fine and you can do it locally too with various tools: https://www.epubconverter.com/epub-to-mobi-converter/ https://www.epubconverter.com/epub-to-mobi-converter/
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  The Kindle handles .mobi and .azw3. It is trivial to convert EPUB to MOBI before you send the book to the device over USB (it can even be done as part of a command-line script, for example).
  - anilakar 6y ago
    Having to deal with the .epub conversion was the main reason I ditched my Voyage and got a Kobo Aura One instead.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      Why ditch a device just for that reason? Again, the OP assumes that one will transfer books to the device over USB for privacy’s sake. In this case, creating a shell wrapper around cp to automatically convert any EPUB to MOBI upon copying the file (naming the command, say, kindlecp) is trivial.

zdw 6y ago

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...

Shared404 6y ago
> 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.
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
> 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.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  You don't need internet connectivity on the Kindle to look up a word in a dictionary. The Kindle supports dictionaries in Mobipocket format, so the dictionary lives right on the device. It is easy to find .mobi dictionaries for major languages freely available from torrent communities. Using the Kindle's Wikipedia function actually requires going through Amazon's servers and is a privacy violation, so I would not recommend users do that.
johnisgood 6y ago
Mine does not even have wifi. I prefer it that way.

andrewzah 6y ago

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.

BorisTheBrave 6y 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. Keeping it in offline mode doesn't help.
- calcifer 6y ago
  > Keeping it in offline mode doesn't help. Permanently keeping it offline and only transferring via USB does.
wombatmobile 6y ago
https://alexwlchan.net/2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kindle-books/ https://alexwlchan.net/2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kind...
callmeal 6y ago
>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 .
- doc_gunthrop 6y ago
  Apparently you can do the conversion with Calibre.[1] 1: https://epubor.com/how-to-convert-kindle-kfx-to-epubpdfmobi-with-calibre.html https://epubor.com/how-to-convert-kindle-kfx-to-epubpdfmobi-...

rubidium 6y ago

Kindle is a great tech (e-ink) with a terribly expensive ecosystem (amazon store) for books. I load all the books I get directly from my computer (Mostly from project Gutenberg). Turning airplane mode on permanently now.

nikbackm 6y ago

Just use airplane mode? Will also increase the battery life.

Shared404 6y ago
From the article: > 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.

Despoisj 6y ago

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.

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
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."
- neiman 6y ago
  As a freedom-concerned citizen, I always completely understood the policies and methodology of dictators and tyrants, and how what they do is useful for them.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    Quit LARPing - Amazon isn’t trying to take over the world by tracking how often you use the bookmark feature.
- Legogris 6y ago
  Or "It's all fine and dandy today, but what about in x years when there's a new person/group with different incentives in charge?"
api 6y ago
Privacy concerns are usually about how information could be misused, not how it's used right now or routinely.
m52go 6y ago
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).

calcifer 6y ago

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.

zerkten 6y ago

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.

dusted 6y ago

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.

lm28469 6y ago
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.
- irishloop 6y ago
  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.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > 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. While MOBI began as one's company's proprietary solution, the format is well over a decade old now and quite well understood by the Free Software community. Calibre can convert EPUB (or anything else, really) to MOBI, so you can buy or pirate your ebooks from anywhere and easily put them on a Kindle.
  - pqb 6y ago
    I would say exactly the opposite. I regret of buying a book from Amazon [0] dedicated to Kindle-use, because it is DRM protected and I am forced to use "Amazon Kindle" application, otherwise I cannot open it. I am usually okay with DRMs but I miss a fact I haven't bought it elsewhere with less annoying protection. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321 https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications... Psst, "Designing Data Intensive Applications" was very good read. Do you know similar books that focus on distributed systems?

Timpy 6y ago

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.

agarzenm 6y ago

Maybe I am getting less fervent about privacy and data security but I don't see these metrics as PII. 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 6y ago
> 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.

jacknews 6y ago

Surprisingly? Legitimate or not, it seems obvious that Amazon would be heavily monitoring device use, especially with the ad-supplemented devices.

dt3ft 6y ago

As a shareholder, this is disappointing to read.

greentimer 6y ago

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.

submeta 6y ago

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?

frankie_t 6y ago

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.

falcolas 6y ago

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? 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

neiman 6y ago
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?
- falcolas 6y ago
  You'd have to figure out some kind of secure key sharing mechanism between phones, tablets, web browsers, and e-readers. Or, you can trust that a position in a book (bookmarks, notes, etc.) is not sensitive information that really needs to be encrypted. This is my - perhaps overly pragmatic - position.
  - criddell 6y ago
    I think the books you read and your annotations should definitely be protected. Imagine reading about Tienanmen Square in China.

sdsvsdgggggg 6y ago

What irks me about it is that Amazon doesn't give me access to that data.

simonswords82 6y ago

Given how data driven Amazon is this is not really a surprise, is it?

bsharitt 6y ago

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.

stormdennis 6y ago

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.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

> The local IP is the only item on here that bothers me What! Why? What about all the other data?

aww_dang 6y ago

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.

sloshnmosh 6y ago

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.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

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 ).

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blindm 6y ago

This is why I am skeptical of Kindle. It's Orwellian to know all the details of a person's reading habits, and all the minutia of a reading session. This is why I download e-books from the dark web and read them on an airgapped machine, free from The-eye-of-Amazon

derefr 6y ago

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. But this kind of explains it, to me.

sentinel 6y ago

That doesn't seem like a large amount of data. 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.

rvrabec 6y ago

Cool investigation. Thanks for sharing. Have you analyzed what data Marvin collects in each session? Before switching I'd want to see a comparison.

bambax 6y ago

> 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.

theptip 6y ago

This is covered in the terms of service (you read those before using the device, right?): https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GQFYXZHZB2H629WN 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.

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the_arun 6y ago

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.

biophysboy 6y ago

Most of the time my Kindle is on airplane mode - does anybody know if my Kindle will still send this data later all at once, when the wifi is on?

parksy 6y ago

I tried to read the first link in the article, the link in the sentence "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-the-kindle-5317703 https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-th... to https://www.gizmodo.com.au/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703?r=US 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.

altdatathrow 6y ago

How was this achieved? I didn’t realize a Kindle supported HTTP proxys or installing root certs?

aftergibson 6y ago

Can anyone provide a viable open source or non-privacy invasive alternative that isn’t something I need to assemble myself?

jarinflation 6y ago

I love my Kindle I went from the voyage where I eventually destroyed the screen by accident to the oasis (32gb is amazing!). I was always fully aware of the privacy issues, so I only ever used it in airplane mode. None of my kindles have ever been on wifi/3g. I can still buy kindle ebooks and even do software upgrades, all offline, so it never bothered me.

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donor20 6y ago

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.

sasaf5 6y ago

> The local IP is the only item on here that bothers me, though I couldn't find any other local network information that would be problematic. It seems that the author is not really that surprised with the amount of data being collected.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

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

WalterBright 6y ago

I just turn off the Kindle's wifi unless I actually need it.

switch11 6y ago

an interesting article 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

1nikoalvin1 6y ago

definitely going to be selling my kindle now...

gwbas1c 6y ago

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.

DNied 6y ago

How is anyone still using a Kindle after the 1984 scandal?

7leafer 6y ago

SURPRISINGLY