News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance. Parent comment

Re:E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance by kdwikzncba on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @05:31AM (#38625331)
Can you give me an example of a pricacy-respective ebook reader?

I recently bought a Kobo Nia, and then returned it because it required me to create an account before I could use it.

Afterwards I got a PocketBook Basic Lux 4. This I have been using without having had to create an account. I've also never connected it to any wifi. However, I have no way of knowing, without taking significant effort to investigate, whether it's not connecting to free wifi's and relaying back to home my books list etc..

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance by dublinben on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @09:28AM (#38627825)
It’s really easy to hack a kobo to use it without registering:

https://jacobalbano.com/2021/06/24/setting-up-a-kobo-without...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance by kdwikzncba on Thursday December 14, 2023 @02:40AM (#38638815)
Ok but why would I use the device that I have to trick, when a device that doesn't require an account from factory is available? I don't wanna deal with a company that builds ebooks with the expectation that I need to register to some account.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance by octobus2021 on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @10:32AM (#38628844)
I bought Clara 2e and was very disappointed with the requirement to create an account.

After some googling I found you can start it in "sideloader" mode. To do that I plugged it in as USB device and updated a config file by adding "sideloaderMode=true". After restart it skipped account creation and allowed me to start reading the books.

I use Calibri to manage my books and collections. Haven't found how to add dictionaries as of yet but I think it can be done too.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance by arp242 on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @11:13AM (#38629485)
> I have no way of knowing, without taking significant effort to investigate, whether it's not connecting to free wifi's and relaying back to home my books list etc.

I think this is bordering on the unreasonable to be honest. There is no reason to assume it's doing this, and it would be wildly illegal (in EU at least).

[ Parent | on HN ]