I've worked in a senior role in an ISP, for two security companies, IT system planning & support for three and as a communications engineer.
Now I research this stuff for books.
It's a far more serious issue than most imagine and genuinely a threat to employment in many countries and actual liberty or life in some others. Kobo, Apple, Amazon, Barnes&Nook may not be secure and you have no idea who they might deliberately share info with. Also the info can be monitored in transit. Adobe wasn't even encrypting.
IT CAN BE A MATTER of LIFE or DEATH, or IMPRISONMENT, or blocked from jobs what you read, so please don't make light of it. That only helps the data parasites. Maybe you <insert name as appropriate> are secure, or safe, or not reading anything "compromising" but it's not true for many people.
It's nothing to do with paranoia, either the real kind or the Tin Foil Hat brigade public perception of it.
I used a fake email with Kobo. I've disabled Sync & reporting. However if WiFi is on, it does connect to Kobo on the home Page (not in My Books or Collections). Though Kobo doesn't know who I am, they get the time and IP address and that I'm using an eReader. The time and IP will uniquely identify this household if that information is passed to other companies or certain agencies. It's wrong that when Auto Sync is disabled it still contacts Kobo (I think to update the bottom). If Adobe or Overdrive was registered, those would be contacted.
Android and Chrome OS is worst. Chrome Browser.
Windows 10.
Mac OS
iOS
Amazon Fire
Amazon Kindle.
In the EU and some other places some of this behaviour was illegal even before GDPR. The Snowden revelations were no surprise to me and other people familar with the Industry and Security Agencies. It predates Internet. Echelon was created in the 1960s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
In the 1970s in my Communications Engineering job I asked about a facility and the boss said "That isn't there." Some of the gear was passed off as "Deferred Facilities" (communications after a nuclear attack).
It's got out of hand.
A recent article
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/0...ot_to_be_seen/