[mirage]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And are you sure that any bookstore you buy an eBook from is not tracking what you buy? I really don't care if Kobo knows what I read. Amazon, Kobo, and Google all know what I have in the respective libraries. I've not heard of Kobo phoning home when you read side loaded eBooks. Others may know if Kobo phones home or not when you read side loaded eBook with WiFi on.

Any online store of any size is tracking not only what I buy, but what I browse on their site. The bigger the company, the more they've got us profiled. I don't think that's a positive thing, on balance, though it certainly has its value, even to end users.

I get your point. Syncing between devices in the case of ereaders, for one thing. Location services on Google devices make map usage more powerful. Some might like it that tracking results in marketing suggestions that might meet the user's preferences. I don't really want that, but it has value to some. That's probably largely what Kobo wants to glean from its users so that it can try to sell more books and customize devices to them. I'd rather opt out of that, at least the former aspect, if I can, but I can deal with its presence.

My concerns probably come more from the fact that most of the books I will read on the device won't have been bought from Kobo. They'll have been purchased elsewhere before I entered their "ecosystem" and run through Calibre, or will be DRM-free to begin with (less often) to make them usable on the device and tweaked to improve the display or clean up errors in some cases. If I use the device enough, maybe I'll then buy from Kobo, too. Beyond that, I don't really want anyone nosing into what isn't theirs, even if there's no real harm done by them doing it on my small, personal scale.

Whether they analyze and make a note of the specifics of epub files that weren't bought from them, I don't know. Do sideloaded books get uploaded to their servers for syncing purposes and whatever other ones they might want to use them for per their Privacy Policy?

Thanks for engaging on this. I don't mean to be argumentative or veer in directions that are outside the spirit of this forum or even this thread. It seems that you have great experience in all this, which I value. I just wonder how Kobo will use the data they get out of me and whether it'll keep me in my comfort zone. If I like the device, I'll no doubt stick with it, even if I'm not fully on board with the program. It's a role I'm accustomed to playing.