BCharlie (u/BCharlie)

BCharlie commented on Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data nullsweep.com/kindle-coll... · Posted by u/BCharlie

falcolas · 6 years 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?

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BCharlie · 6 years 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.

BCharlie commented on Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data nullsweep.com/kindle-coll... · Posted by u/BCharlie

paranorman · 6 years 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 · 6 years ago

That's a great idea! It looks like the 'bad' stuff goes to unagi-na.amazon.com

BCharlie commented on Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data nullsweep.com/kindle-coll... · Posted by u/BCharlie

mmrezaie · 6 years 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 · 6 years 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.