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E-books are becoming tools of corporate surveillance
- medler 3y agoReading this made me grateful that there are still ways to avoid all this surveillance. For example,—and this is just the tip of the iceberg—reading Standard Ebooks on a privacy-respecting ebook reader.
- ARandomerDude 3y ago> privacy-respecting ebook reader Suggestions?
- itscrush 3y agoKobo seems to work readily offline simply out of box. Plug in usb-c to upload books?
- thaumasiotes 3y agoA kindle will do the same thing. Everything is privacy-respecting if there's no internet connection.
- bippihippi1 3y agokindles have cellular modems
- dugite-code 3y agoNot all of them and they are surprisingly easy to remove. At least the old ones are: https://peekread.info/tech/20210120-removing-3g-modem-from-a-kindle-paperwhite-2/ https://peekread.info/tech/20210120-removing-3g-modem-from-a...
- cricalix 3y agoThey've stopped making Kindles with modems. Latest gen ones are WiFi only. Of course, the hardware might still be in there, just not available for book purchasing.
- TheFreim 3y agoI really enjoy my Kobo Libra H2O with KOReader installed.
- maurits 3y agoMy new Kobo refused to start out of the box, without making an account. Very disappointing.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoI created an account, but then installed KOreader on my Libra 2 and just read books through that. It's FOSS, more customizable, and supports OPDS feeds which can do pretty neat things like finding articles from HN[0]. [0] https://github.com/BHSPitMonkey/news2reader https://github.com/BHSPitMonkey/news2reader
- sotix 3y agoI read that KOreader is unstable on the Libra 2[0], so I haven’t installed it yet even though I would like to. What has been your experience running it? [0] https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/8414 https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/8414
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoIt's been perfectly stable for me since I got the device a few months ago, but I also don't read for hours at a time like the other commenter. It's possible that it leaks memory after viewing several hundred pages or something like that.
- beej71 3y agoI had it installed for a while, and there were fairly frequent crashes (i.e. about once every 8 hours of reading) requiring a reboot. But it was _almost_ worth it. It's a really great reader, especially for reading PDFs. After some software update about 6 months ago it got halfway uninstalled somehow and I did a factory reset and haven't reinstalled it yet. I recall reading that it's not on KOreader's side, and they can'tfix. :(
- beej71 3y agoCan confirm you need to log into your Kobo account to get it going.
- thih9 3y agoI keep my kindle in airplane mode.
- qwertox 3y agoDo you need to keep it 100% of the time in airplane mode? Couldn't it be queuing stats to upload them once it leaves AP mode?
- dugite-code 3y agoWith a jailbroken kindle you can install the BBB (Block Big Brother) filter on the firewall (it's running linux under the hood after all): https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2425330 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2425330 Alternatively like me you can just remove the 3g modem in it's entirety: https://peekread.info/tech/20210120-removing-3g-modem-from-a-kindle-paperwhite-2/ https://peekread.info/tech/20210120-removing-3g-modem-from-a...
- bryanrasmussen 3y agowhat happens when you buy Kindle in EU, I would think when you first turn it on they would have to ask if you want to be tracked and if not would have to fuck off.
- dugite-code 3y agoThat's a good question I couldn't find anything in my cursory searches. Knowing Amazon because all the focus has been on Web browsers and cookies there might not be much available on the ebook front atm.
- lrem 3y agoKindle with ads has been observed to, after a couple alerts that it’s been offline for too long, just ignore airplane mode at some point.
- 3y ago
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoI like the Marvin3 reader on iPhone. Haven't found something I like on the desktop though.
- bluish29 3y agoIs it still on app store or just not available in the US?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoOh shit. My bad. I don't know honestly... I got it a couple years ago, and it was everything that Books wasn't. Apple Books thinks I want to put tiny 1mb epub files in my iCloud, which is full (no idea why) and then it won't save them. So when I reopen, now the book's gone even though I have like 40 gigs free on my phone. Simple interface, simple list of books to choose from, etc. And now the damned thing's gone and I have no idea why.
- II2II 3y agoThe underlying problem is obtaining the books. Even if you never register your ereader and never let it go online, you are just shifting the problem to a computer. They loose fine-grained details about what you are reading, but that's about it. If you understand that and take proper precautions, I would imagine that any ereader that doesn't require registration would be fine. If you never put it online, it cannot accidentally go online. Plus it isn't tied to your name. Personally, I use Kobo. You have to jump through a hoop to bypass registration by modifying an SQLite database. Other than that there are no protections, so you aren't using sketchy software to realize that degree of privacy.
- Hoodedcrow 3y ago> you are just shifting the problem to a computer. Libgen works with anonymizers.
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- sebtron 3y agoPocketbook https://pocketbook.ch https://pocketbook.ch You can download your books as you want and copy them to the device in many ways, including connecting the thing via USB to your pc and using it as an external storage unit. Sounds trivial but try to do that with a smartphone. You can buy books from their shop if you make an account, but it is completely optional.
- pneff 3y agoI wasn't aware of Pocketbook, interesting to see a smaller competitor in this market. Unfortunately they might run into the same issues discussed in this article. They have two privacy policies. The one which seems to cover their web site [1] and one which I assume is for their devices [2]. The latter says the following: > We collect such non identified information concerning the Application: > […] > Usage Data includes information about how you use our Application. By Usage Data we mean: how you use your book library, information concerning which buttons on the Application you click, which you do not, how often do you use buttons, turning on/ off the device, setting font options, changing the interface language, sending archive, changing the library settings, setting the read mode. We collect these information to make our Services better for the end-customers. Understanding of your usage preference give us the opportunity to develop better Application, which will have higher reliability, usability, compressed functionality and extremely easy startup. The first privacy policy [1] though says they do not collect any "Special Categories of Personal Data about you". [1] https://pocketbook.ch/en-ch/privacy-policy https://pocketbook.ch/en-ch/privacy-policy [2] https://pocketbook.ch/en-ch/reader-mobile-privacy-notice https://pocketbook.ch/en-ch/reader-mobile-privacy-notice
- Hoodedcrow 3y agoCan't you just never connect your device to the internet though?
- Novosell 3y agoAre you saying it's hard to get phones recognized as external storage devices? I've not had this issue with any of my android phones or my Boox e-reader which runs android.
- aorth 3y agoStandard Ebooks is a fantastic project. I have been supporting them for years. I love their attention to detail of typography and their approach to building the books in the open, from source code, with open source tools. I wish their project existed in many other languages! The only caveat is that they have to wait for books that are in the public domain.
- neilv 3y agoA year ago, I bought a PocketBook InkPad Lite for this purpose, and keep its WiFi disabled, as an interim solution, until hardware&firmware that guarantees privacy. I buy non-DRM ebooks (so far, they cost about twice Kindle prices), and `rsync` them to the ereader over USB. More info: https://www.neilvandyke.org/ebooks/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/ebooks/
- Y_Y 3y agoSave money by buying the normal book and pirating the non-restricted version
- _nalply 3y agoThis assumes that buying the normal book gives you protection from prosecution. I am not sure whether you really can assume this. Meanwhile in my jurisdiction, as long as I don't share with the public, I am free to download unencumbered ebooks and other media when I find them. No need to buy something for hope of non-prosecution.
- Y_Y 3y agoYou've assumed avoiding prosecution was the aim! I feel it's underwood around the literati that it's trivial to avoid being caught and so anyone who hands over money is doing so for morality or convenience. For most e-books (anything mass-market or academic) the convenience is better for piracy so my suggestion was for someone who didn't want to feel they weren't properly rewarding the author/publisher.
- _nalply 3y agoMy bad, sorry. However: We all know that creators don't get the whole money you pay for some works. If I would want to support a creator I would try to find a way to support directly. In other words I find it a bad idea to buy a book as a way to donate.
- 3y ago
- getwiththeprog 3y agohttps://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/
- kdwikzncba 3y agoCan you give me an example of a pricacy-respective ebook reader? I recently bought a Kobo Nia, and then returned it because it required me to create an account before I could use it. Afterwards I got a PocketBook Basic Lux 4. This I have been using without having had to create an account. I've also never connected it to any wifi. However, I have no way of knowing, without taking significant effort to investigate, whether it's not connecting to free wifi's and relaying back to home my books list etc..
- dublinben 3y agoIt’s really easy to hack a kobo to use it without registering: https://jacobalbano.com/2021/06/24/setting-up-a-kobo-without-logging-in/ https://jacobalbano.com/2021/06/24/setting-up-a-kobo-without...
- kdwikzncba 3y agoOk but why would I use the device that I have to trick, when a device that doesn't require an account from factory is available? I don't wanna deal with a company that builds ebooks with the expectation that I need to register to some account.
- octobus2021 3y agoI bought Clara 2e and was very disappointed with the requirement to create an account. After some googling I found you can start it in "sideloader" mode. To do that I plugged it in as USB device and updated a config file by adding "sideloaderMode=true". After restart it skipped account creation and allowed me to start reading the books. I use Calibri to manage my books and collections. Haven't found how to add dictionaries as of yet but I think it can be done too.
- arp242 3y ago> I have no way of knowing, without taking significant effort to investigate, whether it's not connecting to free wifi's and relaying back to home my books list etc. I think this is bordering on the unreasonable to be honest. There is no reason to assume it's doing this, and it would be wildly illegal (in EU at least).
- cratermoon 3y agoThis is mostly about Amazon Kindle, but it also mentions Hoopla, an e-reader app. Presumably this applies to things like Overdrive as well. I'm satisfied with my Kobo, epubs and Calibre.
- gnicholas 3y agoThe scariest part of the article (for me) was about information being packaged and sold. In that regard, the article was not about Amazon, since it is not alleged to have done this. Of course, Amazon is huge enough that they can profitably use reading history to sell you other things. But it would be worse if they were also selling off your private reading history.
- hedora 3y ago> But it would be worse if they were also selling off your private reading history. Google makes a similar argument, but I am not convinced. They still give information to abusive governments, and their in-house infrastructure for monetizing your data is state of the art. Plus, data breaches are basically inevitable. Even if they weren’t, some percentage of FAANG will eventually have a few down quarters in a row and sell access to the data to the highest bidder, or be acquired by an oligarch.
- dylan604 3y agoat this point, any app, device, service, website that does not actively promote the fact that they do not harvest data, track, spy, etc should just automatically be assumed that they are. The money to be made is too good. The requirements to do it are too easy. The usability impact on the user is negligible if it's even measureable to non-existent. It's pretty much like this war has been lost, but nobody wants to admit it or even admit it existed.
- catchnear4321 3y ago> It's pretty much like this war has been lost, but nobody wants to admit it or even admit it existed. i didn’t hear no bell. (bell sound is a subscriber exclusive.)
- dylan604 3y agoif the fat lady ain't singing, she's definitely warming up
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- StanislavPetrov 3y agoAnd they wonder why we download books from Z-library with a VPN instead of the, "legitimate" option. It is very similar to using ad blockers. If "legitimate" businesses refuse to let me view and pay for their products without being tracked, loaded with malware and/or having my data sold to third parties, then as far as I'm concerned they have no grounds to complain when I go another route.
- jwrallie 3y agoI am pretty sure Amazon was giving me ads based on books on my kindle that I did not buy through Amazon, so you also would have to pay attention not to connect to any network even if you acquire books by other means.
- nikolayasdf123 3y agoget printed books (or pdfs), distill your own water, grow your own food (if you can)
- ausaus 3y agoI read purchased ebooks with DRM stripped in Calibre on a jailbroken Kindle with KOreader.
- 65a 3y agokoreader is great, I have a (very) hacked up pinenote that runs koreader, and the reading experience is very good. It's also extensible enough that you can easily port/customize it to new devices or hardware.
- Moldoteck 3y agoso you have commited a crime, bc afaik stripping drm is illegal. At this point why not just pirate it? Are you doing this to pay the author for his work?
- ausaus 3y agoI have no problem paying for content but I don't want to be restricted in the ways that I can view it.
- Yodel0914 3y agoThis may well be a serious issue, but it's hard to tell because this article is atrociously written.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoAlmost no research, despite implying multiple threads to pull on interesting original research... and yet the article is 100% an appeal to emotion and/or tropes. Opportunity lost , indeed
- mrweasel 3y ago> the article is 100% an appeal to emotion and/or tropes. It has to be, otherwise the author would need to address the issue that they are writing an article about surveillance, for a site that attempts to load almost 40 different trackers when you read the article.
- lolinder 3y agoI started rolling my eyes at "reader surveillance is a deeply intersectional threat", and it didn't get any better from there. A whole lot of platitudes and speculation about how women and minorities are hardest hit, but essentially no actual information on who is doing what with which bits of data.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- pfix 3y agoIs this a concern to EU citizens? Seems to be one of the reasons the GDPR exits.
- switch007 3y agoIt should be if you use apps/websites run by companies outside of the EU or small enough to not care. GDPR doesn’t put the fear of god in to every company on the planet the way many people seem to think it does
- pxtail 3y agoIt seems to me that you are putting too much faith in GDPR - if particular service kind of flies under the radar then I'm assuming that nobody who operates it cares about GDPR
- yesbut 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- BramLovesYams 3y agoI only buy physical books. Not trying to be sarcastic here, but I have yet to find an E-Reader that gives me the same relaxing feeling that looking at ink on paper does at the end of the day. For the the library-in-one device convenience hasn't outweighed the disconnected simplicity of reading a book. After spending a work day staring at a screen I have zero interest in looking at at yet another display.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoThere's reading for pleasure and then there's reading as a requirement. Carry around dozens of 1000+ page technical reference volumes? Nah, no thanks, I'll take an instantly searchable e-reader I can stick in my pocket, with non-destructive notes, highlights and bookmarks that'll sync between my devices. Reading for pleasure? Gimme a hardback any day.
- gnicholas 3y ago> Without laws to stop them, it’s reasonable to expect that popular library apps like Hoopla and Libby are hiding similar behavior behind legal smokescreens. Whenever I check out (non-audio) books on Libby/OverDrive, it always just sends the books to my Kindle Cloud Library. This presumably means OverDrive doesn't know what passages I actually read, or for how long. And the mere fact of my borrowing seems to be protected by state law (many states, including CA, protect this information). [1] It would be interesting to know how these surveillance tactics run up against these privacy laws. 1: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/privacy/statelaws https://www.ala.org/advocacy/privacy/statelaws
- verisimi 3y ago> E-books are becoming told off corporate surveillance Perhaps it's a small point, but the title is wrong imo. There's no becoming about it, this was a major point all along, from inception. Just like mobiles are spying devices (updated so that batteries are non removable now), like smart meters, like electric cars, etc. Some of us have known and talked about the level of spouting being baked into hardware for a long time. This sort of intrusion was telegraphed, but missed by most technology fans, who have misplaced their faith with government and corporations.
- Springtime 3y ago> Many students are required to use Elsevier’s digital books and learning products in order to complete coursework... By default, Elsevier surveils every page a student visits on the internet—whether it’s related to their education or a google search for nearby abortion clinics. Then... sell[s] this information to data brokers. Am I missing something where it goes from reading Elsevier's books and using their site to making the leap to internet-wide surveillance? From skimming through the SPARC report they cite it seems various findings are based on privacy policy language, one of which states that 'browsing history', 'search history' and 'interactions with our and other websites' may be collected, though this reads like it may just involve their own sites' analytics with only the latter involving other sites (which could be just outlinks but is unclear). While the rest of the report seems to just cover some overviews of their own cookies and open-ended concerns about third-party scripts (which include general CDNs and their own analytics hosted by third-parties).
- ksjskskskkk 3y agoits one example. then she list 4 others. your company probably gives you safari books and lynda... ALL of those record every single action for DRM purposes. the side effect is that now you reading list, how long, what time you read which line etc is all collected and readily available to anyone as we know what happens to all data (from marketers to gov to law enforcement etc)
- Springtime 3y agoRight, Elsevier collects analytics on their own services, which has the possibility of being accessed by others, which itself is one concern, however the claim by Fast Company and Fight for the Future was Elsevier somehow surveils broad internet usage outside the scope of their own products. For this to be true they'd either need their own trackers on every single website online (or be ingesting from those that do but at which point it's not Elsevier's tracking) or be have software/browser addon installed on the clients' system. Only a small handful of companies have approached the near-ubiquity of webpage presence of the former that made cross-internet tracking a realistic scenario (see eg. past critique of Google/Facebook embeds) but afaict the only thing being interpreted here is a line in a privacy policy that is very likely being misinterpreted. Certainly the report doesn't make any claim about ubiquitous internet tracking in its key findings summaries. Contrast that to how Fight for the Future has run with it: > Elsevier tracks more than what books someone reads—it surveils readers’ search and browsing history across the whole web, collects their locations, and builds profiles based on inferences from this data.
- southernplaces7 3y agoStripping DRM, making "your" books really your own books, and then transferring, storing and reading them however you damn well please are the sequence of simple solutions to the corporate/legal crap that's so common these days and to the parasitic garbage described in the article. Also, just resorting to plain pirate copy torrenting and download, because if the combination of legal players who make getting your own DIGITAL copy of book so bloody complicated and restricted want to take that route, they deserve a few leaks in revenue.
- phendrenad2 3y agoPretty sure GDPR/CCPA prohibits them from actually making use of this data. But simply collecting data for temporary use is enough to get the expert journalists another day's worth of copy.
- legitster 3y ago> By default, Elsevier surveils every page a student visits on the internet—whether it’s related to their education or a google search for nearby abortion clinics. How is this even possible? The article has nothing to back this up. And it's not even an e-book! Elsevier uses a custom JavaScript "reader". So it's just a web page. But I think someone read their privacy policy and got confused about what they are capable of.
- pcstl 3y agoI was thinking the same thing. This article seems remarkably light on the facts. They throw around a handful of scary words, but there is very little evidence to back it up or even specifics of how this surveillance might be happening or what data is being sold.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- masterfooo 3y agoThat is exactly why I have thousands of offline books in my offline library and I use a no internet/wifi Android ebook reader to read them.