Your Kobo Knows Every Book You’ve Ever Read
I haven’t turned the internet on on mine for over 2 years now lol
Well. I got a kobo because of the easy aideloading. Got lazy and just started buying through their store.
Had a exit strategy of keeping it offline and sideloading everything with calibre. Guess it’s time to go down that route
Doesn’t that kinda kill the point of a Kobo? I mean you can sideload everything with Calibre on a Kindle and on other readers.
Option 2) Use QuillOS/Inkbox (they changed their name and I don’t remember which is the new name). FOSS OS for many Kobo devices
This is super interesting! I’ve been using KOreader forever, but this looks cool. According to the last post on mobiread, the dev is still working on it for Kobo. Has a new update coming soon. I’m intrigued.
Oh I need to check this out! Thanks!
Not to be a menace, but do you have a specific source on the claim that that it collects telemetry on sideloaded books? In the Github link there’s a line that says it “locks down telemetry” without elaborating further, I couldn’t see anything else about it in the docs and a quick web search doesn’t bring up anything about Kobo collecting telemetry on side-loaded books.
It’d just be nice to properly verify before I do anything.
https://github.com/seandheath/koboctl/blob/main/internal%2Fhardening%2Fhosts.go#L20
the code at the very least works, and blocks trackers including google analytics, google ad tracking and hotjar behavior analytics. presumably this would happen in the default OS and initiated when clicking on (and maybe even turning pages on) any book, including sideloaded ones. I assume this doesn’t work in koreader regardless of whether you disable those domains or not. If you want you can always contact the author.
Why are they doing this and why is it important?
I would like to know as well. Maybe they need it to grow? Everyone around me still uses Amazon and Kindles unfortunately and don’t even know about Kobos existence until I mention it. Even then people are afraid of change. Or somehow its really hard.
Maybe simply to get better recommendations on their stores?
The tone of the post and the comments make it seem pretty negative. I’m more wondering why it’s a bad thing I guess.
Typical .world dude
Yes let’s give more power to the panopticon
I don’t understand. Explain why this bad, it’s a genuine question.
I won’t engage in a conversation with an EE (ECE) who walks around privacy@ and yet spouts such a disingenuous inquiry. A guy who has experience in the workforce shouldn’t need a wake-up call about bad corporate practices. At least in theory.
Wow, I feel like I was pervy glassed since I’ve written the text above. You never know when the person next to you is a plain hacker or even an NSA asset lol. And dumb questions can sometimes be social engineering.
I have an older Kobo Glo and I always transfer books via usb. I have never connected it to the internet. Isn’t that possible anymore with newer Kobos?
No, they require a login to initialize these days
I got one just in June. I’ve been using it for months and have never created an account. I only connect it via USB and use it to read works from Anas Archive.
My Kobo Clara HD had a hard reset that after starting up required an account, there have been reports of this going back for years. Which model do you have?
It’s a Koba Libra Color. I can’t recall if I’ve had to do a hard reset or not, but so far at least I’ve been able to use it without an account.
Are you sure the method described in your link doesn’t work? I’m seeing other sources saying it does: https://yingtongli.me/blog/2018/07/30/kobo-rego.html
I don’t remember exactly how I did it but I have a Clara 2e and was able to bypass the login requirement by editing the sqlite file, I have never put in a wifi password
I think it depends on what you want. You only need to do the SQL lite thing if you want to be able to access the store and overdrive, probably a few other features.
If you don’t care about any of that, you just open the .conf go to the [ApplicationPreferences] section and add the line
SideloadedMode=true
Then you’re good to go. This worked on my Kobo Clara BW and my old Libra h2o (which I miss so much).
If you want to keep going from there then nickelmenu, koreader.
Ah, that might have been how I did it actually, I don’t use those other features
The method took me doing it twice for it to work, but I wouldn’t consider it an obvious option. There was previously just a skip/do it later.
Yeah it is scummy that there is no option in the UI
Shame, guess my next ereader will be an open source one.
Can you still get books from your library via overdrive? Any source regarding kobo ereader telemetry?
Still getting some of my books through overdrive
