Disable Activity tracking?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by pghaworth

agreed. he does help continually, though not always in a pleasant way. should he decide to be less rude with his efforts his help would be even more appreciated.

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

One of the few things I remember from my Catholic upbringing is, "do unto others as you would have them do to you." In this case, my response was in keeping with the way I was being treated. And if you can find a post were I have attacked someone first, please point it out.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

Like I did not already try what he suggested Before I asked

Again, Really? You said:

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

No Off/On switch to toggle.

Which, while curt, was not impolite. But suggests you couldn't in the option to turn off and on. Or didn't understand what I meant. Your next response was:

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

Cant you read David There IS No On/Off No Check Box! sheesh

Which is downright rude, insulting and completely uncalled for. And still says you don't either couldn't find the option or didn't understand what was being said.

And then we get:

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

I NEVER turn that on. So IF its OFF there should be No Activities or information on my reading. And yet says I been reading 777 hours...

Which is the whole point of this thread. The function of that setting has apparently changed in one of the recent firmware versions. Up until sometime fairly recently, it did block all activity. Now, seems to only block the reporting to Kobo. Which is good as that matches what the options says.

Now, if you are finished being rude, go back and read what I said earlier in the thread. I said to turn the option off to clear the stats. Then turn them on to use them. I did miss the fact that you already had them off. But, that does really change anything. Toggling the option like I said should still result in the stats being cleared. But, in your case, you need to turn them on, then off. That does clear the stats on the device I tested with under firmware 4.19.14123.

And if you open the settings from the stats page, make sure you leave the a stats page and come back so that they will be refreshed.

If this doesn't work, then something else is going on. That would need to be investigated. Maybe restarting the device after the changes just in case something didn't pick up the option change. Or, it could be your database is corrupt and hence isn't being updated correctly.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Again, Really? You said:



Which, while curt, was not impolite. But suggests you couldn't in the option to turn off and on. Or didn't understand what I meant. Your next response was:



Which is downright rude, insulting and completely uncalled for. And still says you don't either couldn't find the option or didn't understand what was being said.

And then we get:



Which is the whole point of this thread. The function of that setting has apparently changed in one of the recent firmware versions. Up until sometime fairly recently, it did block all activity. Now, seems to only block the reporting to Kobo. Which is good as that matches what the options says.

Now, if you are finished being rude, go back and read what I said earlier in the thread. I said to turn the option off to clear the stats. Then turn them on to use them. I did miss the fact that you already had them off. But, that does really change anything. Toggling the option like I said should still result in the stats being cleared. But, in your case, you need to turn them on, then off. That does clear the stats on the device I tested with under firmware 4.9.14123.

And if you open the settings from the stats page, make sure you leave the a stats page and come back so that they will be refreshed.

If this doesn't work, then something else is going on. That would need to be investigated. Maybe restarting the device after the changes just in case something didn't pick up the option change. Or, it could be your database is corrupt and hence isn't being updated correctly.

please correct me if i'm wrong, i think you mean firmware 4.19.14123 not 4.9.14123.

best festive wishes koboy

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Again, Really? You said:



Which, while curt, was not impolite. But suggests you couldn't in the option to turn off and on. Or didn't understand what I meant. Your next response was:



Which is downright rude, insulting and completely uncalled for. And still says you don't either couldn't find the option or didn't understand what was being said.

And then we get:



Which is the whole point of this thread. The function of that setting has apparently changed in one of the recent firmware versions. Up until sometime fairly recently, it did block all activity. Now, seems to only block the reporting to Kobo. Which is good as that matches what the options says.

Now, if you are finished being rude, go back and read what I said earlier in the thread. I said to turn the option off to clear the stats. Then turn them on to use them. I did miss the fact that you already had them off. But, that does really change anything. Toggling the option like I said should still result in the stats being cleared. But, in your case, you need to turn them on, then off. That does clear the stats on the device I tested with under firmware 4.9.14123.

And if you open the settings from the stats page, make sure you leave the a stats page and come back so that they will be refreshed.

If this doesn't work, then something else is going on. That would need to be investigated. Maybe restarting the device after the changes just in case something didn't pick up the option change. Or, it could be your database is corrupt and hence isn't being updated correctly.

Then Why did you Butt in & Give the EXCATE Same directions the others had Like I didn't already try that! Maybe You need to READ the Thread Before you keep repeating yourself.

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by Alastair_S

Barbara,
I don't know why it isn't working for you. All I can suggest is that you follow what I did exactly: go to the home screen, make sure that WiFi is off, then access settings > Energy saving and privacy > second page, toggle "Automatically share data about the features you use" on and off, and then return to the home screen. If that doesn't work for you then there must be some difference between the Touch (my device) and your devices.

Me Either. 2 different devices you think it would work with one of them 1 6"Aura 2 Clara. Any how

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by koboy

please correct me if i'm wrong, i think you mean firmware 4.19.14123 not 4.9.14123.

I want and checked the build number and used cut-and-paste for it. I really should have used it for the whole number.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

Then Why did you Butt in & Give the EXCATE Same directions the others had Like I didn't already try that! Maybe You need to READ the Thread Before you keep repeating yourself.

Sorry, but that is BS. No one had suggested the way to clear the stats was what I suggested. The post I responded to was:

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

It dosent tell you how long 1 ebook took to read its tracking how long ALL ebooks you have read since it was loaded onto the device. I just wish it had a way to Restart it. Like Midnight New years LOL

My response is immediately after this. If I was butting in repeating instructions, why did you need to ask this question?

Barbara: My rude responses were a direct reaction to your rudeness. Up until that point, and not for several of you posts afterwards, did you actually say that you had tried toggling the option and that it hadn't worked for you. You said, there was no option. If you meant, "I did that and it didn't work", then that is what you should have said. My response to that would have been vastly different.

And, my apologies to everyone else for getting off track. Hopefully I haven't ruined anyone's post Christmas relaxation.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by davidfor

And, my apologies to everyone else for getting off track. Hopefully I haven't ruined anyone's post Christmas relaxation.

I want to thank you for the help you give.

[PeterT]

I wonder if there might be an option that could be manually set in the kobo.conf for to disable the capturing of reading times?

Sent from my SM-T290 using Tapatalk

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by davidfor

One of the few things I remember from my Catholic upbringing is, "do unto others as you would have them do to you." In this case, my response was in keeping with the way I was being treated. And if you can find a post were I have attacked someone first, please point it out.

fwiw, I find your restraint and civility under continued provocation admirable, and your patient persistence in trying to provide rant-free technical assistance is an asset to this site.

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I want to thank you for the help you give.

+1

One of the things people come to MR for is clear and simple instructions. Nothing wrong with providing step by step instructions. I came to the same conclusion David did, so that makes 2 people, so I assume more people reading this thread would have come to the same conclusion.

[davidfor]

For the record, I asked Kobo about this change. The response was:

If you have data sharing disabled now we will still collect reading stats locally on the device, but they won't be sent to any kobo servers.

And there isn't any way to turn all the stats collection off.

[alec123]

Originally Posted by davidfor

For the record, I asked Kobo about this change. The response was:

"If you have data sharing disabled now we will still collect reading stats locally on the device, but they won't be sent to any kobo servers."


And there isn't any way to turn all the stats collection off.

This is good to know. Thank you for checking with Kobo.

From a privacy standpoint, it would be comforting to have a patch which would periodically delete this information from the database, or even an option from the Calibre side in the "Kobo Utilities" plugin.

Even though Kobo says it won't be sent to their servers now, many of us have been burned by companies accidentally disregarding software privacy check boxes and/or policies during software updates, etc. It's much better to remove the possibility proactively.

Looking in my reader's database just now (Kobo Mini running 4.19.14123), there were many lines in the activity table from the last few days, and almost none from before upgrading to 4.19. So it is true that the data collection is now turned on even if sharing is disabled.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by alec123

This is good to know. Thank you for checking with Kobo.

From a privacy standpoint, it would be comforting to have a patch which would periodically delete this information from the database, or even an option from the Calibre side in the "Kobo Utilities" plugin.

Even though Kobo says it won't be sent to their servers now, many of us have been burned by companies accidentally disregarding software privacy check boxes and/or policies during software updates, etc. It's much better to remove the possibility proactively.

Looking in my reader's database just now (Kobo Mini running 4.19.14123), there were many lines in the activity table from the last few days, and almost none from before upgrading to 4.19. So it is true that the data collection is now turned on even if sharing is disabled.

You are looking at the wrong table. The Activity is used by the device. With the previous tiled home page, it was used to decide what tiles were on the screen. It might still be used for this, but, it is now pretty much a "write-only" table. It is possible that the data is read into memory at startup and used from there. Then writes or deletes are done as the data changes.

The Event table is the main one used stats. That gets update with a lot of things as you read a book. I've done some analysis of what is in it in the past. But, it is mainly events related to reading or otherwise handling books. I'm not sure how much of this is ever sent to Kobo.

The table AnalyticEvents is the main one used for the reporting to Kobo. If you look at it when the data sharing is on, it builds up entries until a sync is done. The entries are sent and then cleared. If you turn the data sharing off, it is cleared and one entry is added. The has "Type" of "TrackingOptOut". I have been watching this on one of my devices, and nothing is being added to it.

The other place for data tracking is the file "Analytics.conf" in the directory ".kobo/Kobo". This has the Google Analytics in it. From memory, that just has a placeholder in it when the data sharing is off. I haven't watched this file enough to be sure of what happens with it.

You can clear the stats any time you want. Just toggle the data sharing option on and off again. That clears the Event and AnalyticEvents table. And I think the Analytics.conf file. If you do that with the WiFi off, is shouldn't be able to send anything.

If you are still worried, my Kobo Utilities plugin has a function to add a trigger to the database that automatically deletes any new entries added. And you can replace the file Analytics.conf with a directory of the same name. These steps should prevent anything from being stored to be sent later.

[alec123]

Thank you! That is very clear. Appreciate the clarification and will take a look at the tables.