Privacy - Is it just me?

[TGS]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

y'all have an over inflated sense of self importance if you really believe that Amazon gives a rats left testicle about the content on your Kindle. so what if you have all of Harry Potter on it? how is Amazon to know where it came from? anyone is perfectly legally within their rights to tear up those books and scan them in. do you REALLY think anyone is going to spend time proving otherwise? now if you were doing it and SELLING the scanned copies, yeah, they'd probably get a little pissed and do something about it.

some folks really do qualify for aluminum foil hats! sheesh

Not sure where all that came from! Nobody had mentioned Amazon knowing about the presence of dodgy books - it was a question of why Amazon would want the kind of access they demand whatever you have on your reader.
Some folks really do fly off the handle! sheesh

[vaughnmr]

Originally Posted by TGS

Not sure where all that came from! Nobody had mentioned Amazon knowing about the presence of dodgy books - it was a question of why Amazon would want the kind of access they demand whatever you have on your reader.
Some folks really do fly off the handle! sheesh

Please inform me about the Apple terms when the iPad becomes available...

[TGS]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

People, get a life!

Got one - just trying to keep bits of it - like my reading habits - private

[K-Thom]

Amanzon can't "demand" access to your Kindle, that's the whole point about not getting too nervous about their ToS.

Don't buy eBooks from Amazon, don't turn on Whispernet, and Amazon will never ever know one lousy bit about your reading habits or what you store on your Kindle. It's really that simple.

Still want to upgrade firmware? Download onto your PC, connect Kindle via USB.
Still want to buy eBooks from Amazon? Load them to Kindle for PC (or Mac), rip them, upload them via USB to your Kindle.

Amazon doesn't upload any of your eBooks to their servers ("all your eBooks are belong to us"). There isn't a horde of underpaid members from the outer party who browse through all your files to report any wrongdoing.

This isn't 1984, after all ...

[Ramen]

I don't really fancy this type of discussion because it typically never changes anything. Still, I'd like to drop a few basic points:

Originally Posted by HarryT

The reason for all this data storage, in case it's escaped anyone's notice, is so that information can be shared and synced between different devices. So if you're reading a book on your Kindle, and then you carry on reading the same book with the Kindle app on an iPhone, you'll automatically start reading at the page you left off at on the Kindle, you'll have all your annotations, etc.

Maybe as an excuse, sure. If that were the intent, Amazon would state something along the lines of "you have X storage allocated to you and we will not access it in any way".

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

y'all have an over inflated sense of self importance if you really believe that Amazon gives a rats left testicle about the content on your Kindle. so what if you have all of Harry Potter on it? how is Amazon to know where it came from? anyone is perfectly legally within their rights to tear up those books and scan them in. do you REALLY think anyone is going to spend time proving otherwise? now if you were doing it and SELLING the scanned copies, yeah, they'd probably get a little pissed and do something about it.

some folks really do qualify for aluminum foil hats! sheesh

Unfortunately, that argument belongs to a past decade. Nowadays, collecting and mining data has become so cheap and automated that it no longer makes sense to exclude data sets. Just process them all. Nobody will notice the difference (other than better results...).

I kind of react allergic to "I have nothing to hide" and "I don't see what they could possibly use the data for" because it typically stems from ignorance. Again, I really do not want to delve into this any deeper but there are truly staggering things you can currently do with data mining. This is not a subjective point.

Data mining possibilities and costs are technical discussions and the answers are pretty clear. The question here is simply how much does Amazon (and the like) do.

[K-Thom]

Nope, the question is what for?

All - by any means - crucial information Amazon might ever get to know about you are also known by the company behind your payment method, either your bank or the credit card company. Maybe even AT&T, if you use Whispernet.

WHICH eBooks/authors do you buy. HOW OFTEN do you buy. HOW MUCH do you usually pay. That's data which might be pretty useful for targeting you as a customer.
Ever wonder about all those flyers in the box when you order something tangible from Amazon? That's one of the roads your data goes.
Anything else? Sorry, nope. That's neither naive nor ignorant. Walking through London with each and every of my steps being watched and recorded - now that would really make me nervous ...

Okay, maybe if I buy a pilot's instruction manual for a Boeing 737 and enter a note "keep an eye on crosswinds when heading into the Empire State building", that indeed might cause some trouble, if someone at Amazon would take a look at it ...

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

y'all have an over inflated sense of self importance if you really believe that Amazon gives a rats left testicle about the content on your Kindle. so what if you have all of Harry Potter on it? how is Amazon to know where it came from?

Oh I don't know, the "scanned and proofed by" section you find in most of these books? Bear in mind, if the data is on Amazon's servers, it can be subject to legal discovery.

(Indeed, it's been tried)

What Amazon think is only a small part of the whole issue.

Quite simply, if it's possible to use the data in a certain way and the agreement doesn't exclude that, then you do have to take into account that they are reserving the right to do so. And any collection of data on someone else's servers is subject to their control and privacy standards, and the ownership of that company and their privacy standards can change without the authorisation you have granted them to use that dataset for in the first place lapsing.

"Why do you wish to know that" is a perfectly valid question.

[fugazied]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I lost interest in Kindles when I found out they could remotely delete books from your device at any time they want to.

Yep that is one of the nastiest features. I find the move from owning books to 'leasing' e-books highly offensive.

I just remove the DRM on my books which lets me put up with the Kindle.
As for privacy, the Internet and casual web browsing is more of a concern to me than Kindle. Privacy is very hard to come by at this point in time, and most people are busy freely giving away their right to privacy on tools like twitter and facebook.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

I agree with Kali (now THAT's a big change!)

*gasp* *cough* *choke*

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by gastan

Your reasoning seems to be that there is already a ton of info "out there" so we may as well just give up and let them have the rest.

My position is a bit more nuanced than that, although this is partly correct.

• I do believe that the information Amazon has access to is basically unimportant. Very little of it is even worth anyone's effort to data mine, except for something like network reliability stats.
• I do believe it is highly unlikely to be abused by government agencies (or at least, no more than having a paper book with notes in the margins, found during a search of your property).
• I do believe almost all of us are making far more critical information available on a regular basis, especially via email, cell phones, and the like.
• If you're going to be careful about this, you really ought to be careful about a heck of a lot of things, because let's face it, this is actually pretty minor and obscure.
• I do NOT regard these type of privacy concerns as "tin foil hat" territory. I'm only expressing that I am not concerned by this particular circumstance, or similar ones (e.g. Gmail, online backup services etc).

Originally Posted by gastan

Forget privacy? Forget (for U.S. residents) the 4th and 5th amendments? Forget the 1st amendment? (it won't mean a thing to have "free speech" if people become afraid to use it when everything is stored "in the cloud")

Just FYI, there isn't actually any explicit references to "privacy rights" in the US Constitution, it was more fabricated by the Supreme Court in a series of decisions. IIRC the EU has some explicit privacy rights and protections -- which, by the way, a) afaik extend to Amazon as they sell ebooks across the EU and b) therefore we can presume so far Amazon has not violated.

I also do not see this as some sort of slippery slope that will erode our rights as citizens.

You, uh, aren't going to pull a Glenn Beck now and cry on cue, are you?

Originally Posted by gastan

You (and others) see no cause for concern? There are legions of historical examples to prove you wrong. Your attitudes of It Can't Happen Here will serve the next purveyors of dystopia very well. I suspect you were a mere babe in 1984 so welcome to the Brave New World.

Uh, no.

I'm not going to reveal my age because that's none of yer danged business but I'm not 16. There's a tremendous difference between Amazon syncing data on their servers, and the NSA hooking into AT&T's routers.

If you don't want a Kindle because of privacy reasons, you have many options, and feel free to go for one (at the price of not getting wireless downloads, automatic backup of purchases and no multi-device syncs). But really, let's have a tad of perspective, and spare us the hyperbole.

[DawnFalcon]

Yes, the perspective is that the Amazon policy is drafted very broadly, and that Amazon would not do that by mistake. If you are concerned with these issues, don't get a Kindle. Simple enough.

[ChrisC333]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

y'all have an over inflated sense of self importance if you really believe that Amazon gives a rats left testicle about the content on your Kindle.

some folks really do qualify for aluminum foil hats! sheesh

NO! NO! NO! Don’t wear the tinfoil hat - that’s exactly what THEY want you to do! They don’t protect your brainwaves at all! Our research has proved that they actually act as RECEIVERS for the multi-national thought manipulating cartels.


Think about it. What do they call those little tracking doodads that they sneak onto your computer - Cookies. And what do some people use tinfoil for baking - yes, it’s Cookies again. Coincidence? I think not.....


The only way to use your KIndle or (brain) Kurdle as THEY call it - is to wear one of our fully organic head protectors - made from 100% natural cow-dung and adobe, using a recipe passed down for centuries by really cosmic old dead dudes from ancient times. Just remember - iPad is an anagram of Dipa - which means “brain-invader” in Ancient Dead Dude Language. It all adds up! Buy a brain screen hat now while stocks last. Coming soon to a paranoiac near you...


Or you could just act as if it really doesn’t matter a damn if some computer somewhere is mindlessly crunching through billions of bytes of dross about which books people clicked on just so that they can send you an automated email saying:

Greetings Zordan the Insignificant,

People like you have been buying “101 Ancient Dung and Adobe Brain Hat Recipes” by Wise Dead Dude” - would you care to cough up for a copy?

P.S. Our server loved your porn collection - it found a couple of clips it didn’t have yet.


You have been warned.

Personally, I'm relaxed about this....

But then I’m pretty strange.


They know that, you know....

[sianon]

Originally Posted by TGS

Would love to move to Montana and live in a shack, (and raise me up a crop of dental floss, perhaps), but am unlikely to get a Green Card for shack living or dental floss growing

As someone said on an earlier thread - which I would have known about had I bothered to look - it's not (or not only), about them knowing about what I've browsed and bought, but it's about them knowing about what I've done with it after I've bought it that seems more intrusive than the background snooping that we all seem to have got used to.

Have you ever stopped to consider that it is rather an egocentric point of view to think that Amazon would consider you as an individual to be worth specifically monitoring what you read. For heavens sake, you are accessing the internet and every site you visit is being recorded by your ISP and can be accessed if required.

[Xanthe]

When I buy items in a supermarket, I use my shopper's card for discounts, and all of my purchases are recorded and stored.

When I buy books at B&N or Borders, I use my member's card and all of my purchases are recorded and stored.

When I use my library card, information about the books/audios/DVDs that I borrow are recorded and stored.

If I buy books from Amazon and put them on a Kindle, they already know about those books.

If I walk in any major city or into any public buildings, my image is rcorded on cameras.

My cable system has a record of every TV show or movie I access.

My ISP has a record of all the web sites I visit.

Hotel bonus points cards ensure that all of my out-of-state visits are recorded.

And that's not even considering all the information that can be gleaned from my credit card records.

If I want to leave this country, I'm entered in databases.

There's a record of every legitimate job I've had in Social Security's database.

I have a cell phone, OnStar, and an EZ Pass device affixed to my windshield; I can be physically tracked six ways from Sunday.

Privacy is just an illusion, and has been for decades. I began to give it up when I first got a Social Security card as a teenager, and definitely lost it when I got my first credit card. A complete image of me can be created just from my data spoor. It no longer is a bugaboo for me because I refuse to be worried or ashamed about anything I do. I'm not going to restrict my life over the worry that people will know more about me that I would like them to - they already do; when I'm dead and gone it's not going to matter anyway. Information stored about me can already be used against me, may already have been - who the hell knows? So if Amazon wants to know where I place a bookmark, have at it. That's not going to stop me from getting that device if I really want one.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

How, exactly, would Amazon know who was and wasn't selling on copies of illegal books held on their Kindle? Perhaps they'd pass on details of all such people just to be on the safe side?

Besides, "When Freedoms are chiseled away......", or does that only apply to freedoms you agree with?

Originally Posted by gastan

Any system that is open to being abused will one day be abused, whether it's by your boss, your politicians, or merely your disgruntled boyfriend/girlfriend. People need to remember that and act accordingly. My response is to try and give them as little as I can and to fight any erosion of individual rights however I can.




Your reasoning seems to be that there is already a ton of info "out there" so we may as well just give up and let them have the rest. Forget privacy? Forget (for U.S. residents) the 4th and 5th amendments? Forget the 1st amendment? (it won't mean a thing to have "free speech" if people become afraid to use it when everything is stored "in the cloud")

You (and others) see no cause for concern? There are legions of historical examples to prove you wrong. Your attitudes of It Can't Happen Here will serve the next purveyors of dystopia very well. I suspect you were a mere babe in 1984 so welcome to the Brave New World.

Originally Posted by TGS

Not sure where all that came from! Nobody had mentioned Amazon knowing about the presence of dodgy books - it was a question of why Amazon would want the kind of access they demand whatever you have on your reader.
Some folks really do fly off the handle! sheesh

Originally Posted by K-Thom

Amanzon can't "demand" access to your Kindle, that's the whole point about not getting too nervous about their ToS.

Don't buy eBooks from Amazon, don't turn on Whispernet, and Amazon will never ever know one lousy bit about your reading habits or what you store on your Kindle. It's really that simple.

Still want to upgrade firmware? Download onto your PC, connect Kindle via USB.
Still want to buy eBooks from Amazon? Load them to Kindle for PC (or Mac), rip them, upload them via USB to your Kindle.

Amazon doesn't upload any of your eBooks to their servers ("all your eBooks are belong to us"). There isn't a horde of underpaid members from the outer party who browse through all your files to report any wrongdoing.

This isn't 1984, after all ...

Originally Posted by Ramen

I don't really fancy this type of discussion because it typically never changes anything. Still, I'd like to drop a few basic points:




Maybe as an excuse, sure. If that were the intent, Amazon would state something along the lines of "you have X storage allocated to you and we will not access it in any way".



Unfortunately, that argument belongs to a past decade. Nowadays, collecting and mining data has become so cheap and automated that it no longer makes sense to exclude data sets. Just process them all. Nobody will notice the difference (other than better results...).

I kind of react allergic to "I have nothing to hide" and "I don't see what they could possibly use the data for" because it typically stems from ignorance. Again, I really do not want to delve into this any deeper but there are truly staggering things you can currently do with data mining. This is not a subjective point.

Data mining possibilities and costs are technical discussions and the answers are pretty clear. The question here is simply how much does Amazon (and the like) do.

Originally Posted by ChrisC333

NO! NO! NO! Don’t wear the tinfoil hat - that’s exactly what THEY want you to do! They don’t protect your brainwaves at all! Our research has proved that they actually act as RECEIVERS for the multi-national thought manipulating cartels.


Think about it. What do they call those little tracking doodads that they sneak onto your computer - Cookies. And what do some people use tinfoil for baking - yes, it’s Cookies again. Coincidence? I think not.....


The only way to use your KIndle or (brain) Kurdle as THEY call it - is to wear one of our fully organic head protectors - made from 100% natural cow-dung and adobe, using a recipe passed down for centuries by really cosmic old dead dudes from ancient times. Just remember - iPad is an anagram of Dipa - which means “brain-invader” in Ancient Dead Dude Language. It all adds up! Buy a brain screen hat now while stocks last. Coming soon to a paranoiac near you...


Or you could just act as if it really doesn’t matter a damn if some computer somewhere is mindlessly crunching through billions of bytes of dross about which books people clicked on just so that they can send you an automated email saying:

Greetings Zordan the Insignificant,

People like you have been buying “101 Ancient Dung and Adobe Brain Hat Recipes” by Wise Dead Dude” - would you care to cough up for a copy?

P.S. Our server loved your porn collection - it found a couple of clips it didn’t have yet.


You have been warned.

Personally, I'm relaxed about this....

But then I’m pretty strange.


They know that, you know....

I had several pointed responses, but it is 0600, I haven't had coffee, and Chris here just did a dandy job.