6 ms·

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 d

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.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Simply purchasing/owning a book on that topic would be enough for an oppressive government like China, they wouldn't need to know where in the book you were exactly.
      - criddell 6y ago
        Some books sold in China are edited for that market. If you highlight a passage that shouldn't be in your book, you could be in trouble.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - neiman 6y ago
    If I can't think of a way to abuse me by having my data, it doesn't mean that someone else doesn't. I would really rather avoid all this discussion by them not having my data to begin with.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      If you know of an alternative that offers client-side encrypted sync, I'd love to hear it. I'm considering alternatives to the Kindle as well, even if for reasons unrelated to the analytics.
      - neiman 6y ago
        I wish I'd knew:-)
  - gambler 6y ago
    >You'd have to figure out some kind of secure key sharing mechanism between phones, tablets, web browsers, and e-readers. Yeah, it's not like Amazon can afford security experts to work on this or anything. >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 an ignorant position that has been proven wrong over, and over, and over again. Private data should be secure by default, because otherwise eventually someone will figure out how to abuse it. This is a lesson form bazillion fraud schemes and social engineering hacks everyone in tech should have learned by now.
    - jacobr1 6y ago
      I've been thinking about PII in this context. If all data is secured by default, then the identification of PII is not about deciding to secure that data, it is about identifying where we might impose (and often this isn't required, but now we can consider it) additional UX burden or complexity in order to add _additional_ security.
    - dahfizz 6y ago
      Amazon could also afford to fill the Panama canal with dirt and reunite the American continents, but why would they? A dozen angry (potential) customers on HN is hardly motivation.
- paxys 6y ago
  The data is encrypted.
  - neiman 6y ago
    Encrypted between me and Amazon (such that Amazon could see the content), or encrypted between my devices such that Amazon can't see the content (but only the encrypted form)?
BCharlie 6y ago
I mention that the data that appears to be used for those purposes is sent again in a separate request to a separate end point, so we have two types of requests: last read location, and reading analytics. Sorry it wasn't clear, I'll try to improve the wording.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Will you also be updating and noting that the requests to Wikipedia and Bing are for explicit customer-benefiting features? Might be worth noting that you can opt out of their data collection (on the e-reader, at a minimum) as well. Settings > Device Options > Advanced Options > Privacy or in the device management console in your account on amazon.com
  - danShumway 6y ago
    The text in question: > Highlighting or tapping any word will send the requests with the text to Bing Translate and Wikipedia, as well as back to Amazon. Is there a reason why that text needs to be sent before the user clicks the "translate" button? Is there a reason why it needs to be sent to Amazon?
    - fouric 6y ago
      > Is there a reason why that text needs to be sent before the user clicks the "translate" button? Yes - UX latency. I would expect this kind of thing to take a few thousand milliseconds, and shaving off a few hundred milliseconds from between when the user highlights text and when they select "translate" is significant. The fact that this data is being sent to Wikipedia of all places further signals that the usage is likely to be innocuous. Do I think that this is globally a good design decision? No, for both engineering and privacy reasons. There's definitely no good reason why it should be sent to Amazon at all.
      - falcolas 6y ago
        > There's definitely no good reason why it should be sent to Amazon at all. I was wracking my brain on this, and all I could come up with was "to independently verify the invoicing for Bing translations" and "how many times are people accessing the definition/translation and not highlighting". So, analytics, not something that explicitly benefits the user.
gambler 6y ago
Why is syncing across devices not opt-in? Why doesn't Kindle tell you which data it sends and when?
- falcolas 6y ago
  Sync is opt-in. And, good question. It would be nice, though I'm sure they've buried it in their multi-page privacy doc somewhere. EDIT: No, it's not opt-in. Reading failure on my part.
  - gambler 6y ago
    >Sync is opt-in. https://www.epubor.com/whispersync-for-kindle.html https://www.epubor.com/whispersync-for-kindle.html "And "Whispersync for Books" is enabled on Kindle Fire, Kindle devices and apps by default." https://smallbusiness.chron.com/amazon-whispernet-work-58992.html https://smallbusiness.chron.com/amazon-whispernet-work-58992... "Whispersync is on by default in all new Kindles, but you can turn off the option on individual devices if you have multiple readers attached to your account." https://ebookfriendly.com/how-to-disable-data-collection-kindle-or-fire/ https://ebookfriendly.com/how-to-disable-data-collection-kin... "How to disable data collection on your Kindle or Fire device"
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Crud, I read that wrong; you're correct in that it's opt-out. That said, given that it provides a high value to the end user (I use it daily), I personally don't mind.
raxxorrax 6y ago
I honestly don't mind the FUD as long as user don't have options. Amazon deserves the bad press in that case. Kindle is an awesome screen reader, but such features make it a bad device. A good device just had an option "sync usage data to Amazon account" <yes/no>. People suggest it is a technical impossibility. It is just a shame that you have no options. Had to quickly search if my kindle has GPS capabilities. Gladly it does not. "Kindle Collects a Surprisingly Large Amount of Data" is a completely honest and in my opinion correct statement. So yes, companies are dishonest in their data collection practices and responding with exaggeration is maybe wrong. But I do care more about the data collection issue.
- falcolas 6y ago
  I pointed this out in a thread, but with the e-reader devices at least, you do have an option. It's opt-out, which sucks, but it does exist.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > which sucks Note that it doesn't just suck because you're giving up using the Kindle itself. It also sucks because you'll be losing your entire collection of Ebooks, which are DRM-encumbered and can not be ported to other non-Amazon devices/platforms/apps. This makes it extremely difficult for other privacy-respecting platforms to compete on the market, since using them requires the user to either break the law by stripping DRM from their books, or to abandon their entire purchased library. Future TOS/EULA/Privacy changes that might not have been in place when a user originally bought their Kindle can thus be forced on them by making it prohibitively expensive for the user to opt out or change ecosystems.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding - you can turn off analytics on your e-reader without giving up the kindle platform. It's also separate from whispersync (which can also be disabled independently).
technofiend 6y ago
The aggravating bit - beyond the fact that Amazon doesn't let you opt out, is that this sometimes affects performance. Switching over to the kindle app occasionally hangs. Killing the app and restarting it usually works, but there are times when I have to go to airplane mode and kill and restart the app just to open a book!
- falcolas 6y ago
  You can opt out, at least on the physical devices. But yeah, the Kindle iOS app is crap in many ways - the one that bugs me is how hot it makes my phone. I mean, WTF?
rtkwe 6y ago
I think the reason to send a sync every page turn is you don’t know if the device will be in contact when any alternate sync trigger happens so to keep it mostly up to date the best option is to constantly sync whenever you have connectivity.
notatoad 6y ago
>the location data doesn't need to be sent with every page turn, for example why not? if i open a book on my phone that i stopped reading on my kindle, i want it to open to the last location i read to on my kindle. not ten pages back because it doesn't sync data every page turn for some imaginary privacy benefit.
crooked-v 6y ago
I believe page location analytics are used for the amount of money that goes to Kindle Unlimited authors, also. It can't just track the very last page in the book that you read, because authors were gaming that by encouraging people to immediately skip to the last page of very large works they didn't otherwise care about. Instead there's some kind of heuristic that tries to figure out if you've more-or-less-normally read the book.
- falcolas 6y ago
  A good point, since KU authors are paid per page read. Lots of fraud potential there.
samatman 6y ago
In isolation, "last read page" could surely be E2E encrypted. Amazon would know that I'm using a Kindle app or device, but everything else could be opaque. There's no motive on Amazon's part to do it this way, it would be a hassle to implement, possibly not great for battery life, and I expect that users don't care much. Frankly, I don't care much, in practice. In principle, yes; everything which can be kept private, should be. But Amazon knowing what page I'm on just doesn't discomfit me, the way the prospect of some company being able to read my messages does.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  The pro-privacy crowd needs to choose it's battles. The most common response about online privacy is "what does is matter if X knows Y? I've got nothing to hide". People already don't care, and I guarantee they also don't care that Amazon knows what page they are on in the book the are reading. There are much bigger issues to focus on
grawprog 6y ago
>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. Why is location needed for that? Shouldn't a device id and account work just fine? I don't need to share my location to sync other devices.

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.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Simply purchasing/owning a book on that topic would be enough for an oppressive government like China, they wouldn't need to know where in the book you were exactly.
    - criddell 6y ago
      Some books sold in China are edited for that market. If you highlight a passage that shouldn't be in your book, you could be in trouble.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- neiman 6y ago
  If I can't think of a way to abuse me by having my data, it doesn't mean that someone else doesn't. I would really rather avoid all this discussion by them not having my data to begin with.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    If you know of an alternative that offers client-side encrypted sync, I'd love to hear it. I'm considering alternatives to the Kindle as well, even if for reasons unrelated to the analytics.
    - neiman 6y ago
      I wish I'd knew:-)
- gambler 6y ago
  >You'd have to figure out some kind of secure key sharing mechanism between phones, tablets, web browsers, and e-readers. Yeah, it's not like Amazon can afford security experts to work on this or anything. >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 an ignorant position that has been proven wrong over, and over, and over again. Private data should be secure by default, because otherwise eventually someone will figure out how to abuse it. This is a lesson form bazillion fraud schemes and social engineering hacks everyone in tech should have learned by now.
  - jacobr1 6y ago
    I've been thinking about PII in this context. If all data is secured by default, then the identification of PII is not about deciding to secure that data, it is about identifying where we might impose (and often this isn't required, but now we can consider it) additional UX burden or complexity in order to add _additional_ security.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    Amazon could also afford to fill the Panama canal with dirt and reunite the American continents, but why would they? A dozen angry (potential) customers on HN is hardly motivation.
paxys 6y ago
The data is encrypted.
- neiman 6y ago
  Encrypted between me and Amazon (such that Amazon could see the content), or encrypted between my devices such that Amazon can't see the content (but only the encrypted form)?

BCharlie 6y ago

I mention that the data that appears to be used for those purposes is sent again in a separate request to a separate end point, so we have two types of requests: last read location, and reading analytics. Sorry it wasn't clear, I'll try to improve the wording.

falcolas 6y ago
Will you also be updating and noting that the requests to Wikipedia and Bing are for explicit customer-benefiting features? Might be worth noting that you can opt out of their data collection (on the e-reader, at a minimum) as well. Settings > Device Options > Advanced Options > Privacy or in the device management console in your account on amazon.com
- danShumway 6y ago
  The text in question: > Highlighting or tapping any word will send the requests with the text to Bing Translate and Wikipedia, as well as back to Amazon. Is there a reason why that text needs to be sent before the user clicks the "translate" button? Is there a reason why it needs to be sent to Amazon?
  - fouric 6y ago
    > Is there a reason why that text needs to be sent before the user clicks the "translate" button? Yes - UX latency. I would expect this kind of thing to take a few thousand milliseconds, and shaving off a few hundred milliseconds from between when the user highlights text and when they select "translate" is significant. The fact that this data is being sent to Wikipedia of all places further signals that the usage is likely to be innocuous. Do I think that this is globally a good design decision? No, for both engineering and privacy reasons. There's definitely no good reason why it should be sent to Amazon at all.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      > There's definitely no good reason why it should be sent to Amazon at all. I was wracking my brain on this, and all I could come up with was "to independently verify the invoicing for Bing translations" and "how many times are people accessing the definition/translation and not highlighting". So, analytics, not something that explicitly benefits the user.

gambler 6y ago

Why is syncing across devices not opt-in? Why doesn't Kindle tell you which data it sends and when?

falcolas 6y ago
Sync is opt-in. And, good question. It would be nice, though I'm sure they've buried it in their multi-page privacy doc somewhere. EDIT: No, it's not opt-in. Reading failure on my part.
- gambler 6y ago
  >Sync is opt-in. https://www.epubor.com/whispersync-for-kindle.html https://www.epubor.com/whispersync-for-kindle.html "And "Whispersync for Books" is enabled on Kindle Fire, Kindle devices and apps by default." https://smallbusiness.chron.com/amazon-whispernet-work-58992.html https://smallbusiness.chron.com/amazon-whispernet-work-58992... "Whispersync is on by default in all new Kindles, but you can turn off the option on individual devices if you have multiple readers attached to your account." https://ebookfriendly.com/how-to-disable-data-collection-kindle-or-fire/ https://ebookfriendly.com/how-to-disable-data-collection-kin... "How to disable data collection on your Kindle or Fire device"
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Crud, I read that wrong; you're correct in that it's opt-out. That said, given that it provides a high value to the end user (I use it daily), I personally don't mind.

raxxorrax 6y ago

I honestly don't mind the FUD as long as user don't have options. Amazon deserves the bad press in that case. Kindle is an awesome screen reader, but such features make it a bad device. A good device just had an option "sync usage data to Amazon account" <yes/no>. People suggest it is a technical impossibility. It is just a shame that you have no options. Had to quickly search if my kindle has GPS capabilities. Gladly it does not. "Kindle Collects a Surprisingly Large Amount of Data" is a completely honest and in my opinion correct statement. So yes, companies are dishonest in their data collection practices and responding with exaggeration is maybe wrong. But I do care more about the data collection issue.

falcolas 6y ago
I pointed this out in a thread, but with the e-reader devices at least, you do have an option. It's opt-out, which sucks, but it does exist.
- danShumway 6y ago
  > which sucks Note that it doesn't just suck because you're giving up using the Kindle itself. It also sucks because you'll be losing your entire collection of Ebooks, which are DRM-encumbered and can not be ported to other non-Amazon devices/platforms/apps. This makes it extremely difficult for other privacy-respecting platforms to compete on the market, since using them requires the user to either break the law by stripping DRM from their books, or to abandon their entire purchased library. Future TOS/EULA/Privacy changes that might not have been in place when a user originally bought their Kindle can thus be forced on them by making it prohibitively expensive for the user to opt out or change ecosystems.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding - you can turn off analytics on your e-reader without giving up the kindle platform. It's also separate from whispersync (which can also be disabled independently).

technofiend 6y ago

The aggravating bit - beyond the fact that Amazon doesn't let you opt out, is that this sometimes affects performance. Switching over to the kindle app occasionally hangs. Killing the app and restarting it usually works, but there are times when I have to go to airplane mode and kill and restart the app just to open a book!

falcolas 6y ago
You can opt out, at least on the physical devices. But yeah, the Kindle iOS app is crap in many ways - the one that bugs me is how hot it makes my phone. I mean, WTF?

rtkwe 6y ago

I think the reason to send a sync every page turn is you don’t know if the device will be in contact when any alternate sync trigger happens so to keep it mostly up to date the best option is to constantly sync whenever you have connectivity.

notatoad 6y ago

>the location data doesn't need to be sent with every page turn, for example why not? if i open a book on my phone that i stopped reading on my kindle, i want it to open to the last location i read to on my kindle. not ten pages back because it doesn't sync data every page turn for some imaginary privacy benefit.

crooked-v 6y ago

I believe page location analytics are used for the amount of money that goes to Kindle Unlimited authors, also. It can't just track the very last page in the book that you read, because authors were gaming that by encouraging people to immediately skip to the last page of very large works they didn't otherwise care about. Instead there's some kind of heuristic that tries to figure out if you've more-or-less-normally read the book.

falcolas 6y ago
A good point, since KU authors are paid per page read. Lots of fraud potential there.

samatman 6y ago

In isolation, "last read page" could surely be E2E encrypted. Amazon would know that I'm using a Kindle app or device, but everything else could be opaque. There's no motive on Amazon's part to do it this way, it would be a hassle to implement, possibly not great for battery life, and I expect that users don't care much. Frankly, I don't care much, in practice. In principle, yes; everything which can be kept private, should be. But Amazon knowing what page I'm on just doesn't discomfit me, the way the prospect of some company being able to read my messages does.

dahfizz 6y ago
The pro-privacy crowd needs to choose it's battles. The most common response about online privacy is "what does is matter if X knows Y? I've got nothing to hide". People already don't care, and I guarantee they also don't care that Amazon knows what page they are on in the book the are reading. There are much bigger issues to focus on

grawprog 6y ago

>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. Why is location needed for that? Shouldn't a device id and account work just fine? I don't need to share my location to sync other devices.