Quote:
Originally Posted by joblack
I'm a concerned about Kobo's privacy policy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-lS...is6W8pOS6rgdrA
(from 1:15+)
At first that sounds half-innocent but it's none of their business what I read, how long I read and so on.
So is Kobo spying upon the user? Can I disable these privacy violations? |
Kobo does that through Reading Life--it captures all sorts of things on Kobo's proprietary formatted books (kepubs) and phones home with it. You have had the option in earlier readers of enabling or disabling Reading Life. I expect that there is that option on the Aura as well. One click, that's all it takes.
My POV has been that they already know what I have purchased from them and I don't really care if they know how fast I read a particular book, if I finish it, etc.
If you ever do a clean install on the machine, you will notice that the number of books read (as indicated in Reading Life) will only reflect the info on the kepubs that sync with their server. You can go from 380 books read to zero if you are not reading kepubs.
A great deal of information about sideloaded books is stored only on the reader and never transmitted to Kobo. They are subject to Canadian privacy protection laws which most people seem to think are far more stringent then those in the US.
People frequently ask for things like syncing across devices for non-kepub books. We've been told that the privacy protection legislation in Canada currently keep that from being possible. I expect that there could be a workaround, an opt in for example, for that, but it hasn't happened yet.