[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by hermes

May I ask you or other forum members if anyone has actually done this habitually? Anyone care to give real world examples?

Personally, yes. This past holiday season, I received a $100 Chapters Gift Card from out-of-province relatives and used it for all of my purchases from my regular Canadian Kobo account since then (was previously using credit card). I no longer have my CC info in my Kobo account and enter the gift card # and PIN every time I make a new purchase.

As for the anonymity aspect, I also have an auxiliary Kobo US account whose billing address goes to a package-receiving-and-holding service right across the border which caters specifically to Canadians. I have never had CC info entered in this account and have been able to pay for the one purchase I made using it with the leftover funds from a second Chapters gift card (which had been a previous year's holiday-gift-from-the-relatives).

Originally Posted by hermes

I see. The fact is in my case I am unlikely to ever be coming back to the first world west, except maybe an occassional visit to Singapore or South Africa. There is always the old fashioned method of a very small item being posted by a friend of course.

Well, in the case of Chapters' Gift Cards, I'm pretty sure they're refillable "online" as well, and you can add extra funds to them via the website and have it paid for via credit card.

Though if you have concerns about that, what you can do is have a friend in Canada buy and maintain a Gift Card, and you have one as well, and they can refill theirs and then transfer the funds over to yours, since you can actually move funds between Chapters gift cards to consolidate those tiny leftover amounts.

Originally Posted by hermes

The trend here in Canada is to ask for name, postal code and sometimes even telephone when making purchases. It's as if soon I will be asked to show some sort of secure ID to get in a taxicab!

I haven't personally noticed when shopping, but I would imagine it might depend on what one intends to buy.

Originally Posted by hermes

Take purchasing event tickets. I was paying by prepaid debit card (don't recall if it had been registered at credit union's website) and was told that I *had* to provide my phone number even though paying in person. This was to call me in case of cancellation.

This seems like a not unreasonable thing to require for event tickets, given that they do get cancelled and you should probably be notified if it happens and you'd been making special plans around the event.

Does this sort of thing happen when you pay cash? Though I suppose vendors might have counterfeiting concerns when confronted with large amounts of cash.

Originally Posted by hermes

One of the challenges with the prepaid cards I have experience with is that the limits are not high - $500. I expect that companies like Kobo etc are even lower. And one has to tie up one's funds at no interest. plus, they are insecure. They are as good as cash.

Well, if you're concerned about interest-bearing, then you'd be better off with a credit card attached to a traceable bank account. The near-cash-convenience-and-liability of a prepaid card is one of the prices you'd pretty much have to accept when using them. It's a trade off between your privacy and whatever else you hold important.

As for your next point, I will simply say that a good VPN IP proxy is your friend.

Originally Posted by hermes

I do not understand why another kindle would work? Is this a technical or an Amazon policy issue?

Not necessarily another hardware Kindle, but a Kindle software app, such as K4PC or K4iPad. Amazon ties their DRM to your account, and in your account you must have at least one registered Kindle app before you can purchase, much less download, any Kindle books at all; even the free public domain stuff.

If you don't want your actual hardware Kindle to be connected to anything that can be traced back to you (in case of embarrassing purchases or whatever), you can workaround it by having a K4App in your account and download and strip the DRM and sideload the books to your Kindle, but this strikes me as being unnecessary hoop-jumping.

Originally Posted by hermes

But are we of topic here as I often am? mean, what does the DRM aspect have to do with the anonymity aspect?

I think I explained it above: if one were really concerned about one's reading material being traceable to one when it would be some sort of liability where one was visiting/lived (this being a point you brought up upthread about concerns about authorities snooping into your reader contents) and one happened to own a Kindle and such, then that's the way one would have to do it.

Also, all DRM schemes are ultimately linked back to your personal info: ADE (used by Sony and Kobo and many more) requires an address registered on their website; B&N uses your name & CC# as a glorified password in their social-DRM thing (but on the upside, there's no activation limit on devices and a file you have lying around for years can be put on a supporting new reader without any problems without having to "authorize" the device via a central server which may be dead by then; plus you can unofficially share your books with friends you really trust this way); Amazon ties it into a combo of both your account and your device.

But if you don't have a Kindle and/or don't care all that much, the above digression was pretty much moot.

Anyway, good luck with balancing your privacy concerns with the practicality of actually purchasing and using e-books from the major vendors.