Discussion on:

eReaders: They're reading us while we read them

Personally I just see things like this as More Of The Same and is part of the reason why I don't play in areas like this.

The same with using Plastic to pay for things when you do the Banks who issue the Plastic get a full list of everything you have just paid for and use these lists as they see fit. The E Book sellers are just doing more of the same and as far as I can see no one cares that they have willingly given their Privacy Away.

Last week we had an interesting thing happen here the Feds arrested people in a different country for Credit Card Fraud where the people concerned broke into Sellers systems stole the Credit Card Details of about .5 of a Million People where they used their Plastic to pay for things like Petrol Groceries and so on and then using somewhere around 30,000 of these Credit Cards promptly ran up 30 Million $ of bills on those cards. Worked out that each Hacked Credit Card was good for about a Million $ in fraudulent sales.

There where many people complaining that they had been hit but as the Banks covered the Loss for the Individual and passed the losses back to the sellers they really didn't care overly much.

What I did find interesting was the banks boasting how their system had not been compromised it was the sellers systems which did introduce a new area into the use of Plastic where the users need to understand how vulnerable that they actually are. Though personally I see this just as the beginning where the end crime will be Identity Theft on a Grand Scale that will not so easily be cured or prevented.

So I still use Cash for every purchase and upset the sellers who have to accept it and don't get to pass on the data to anyone else.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/police-smash-global-gang-behind-500000-aussie-credit-card-thefts/story-fnat7jnn-1226526111909

Col

And thank you for that information. I read about it, but had no idea it was that extensive. Are those Chip and Pin cards?

They are all types of cards as the Data was stolen after the sale was made from what is stored/transmitted on the Sellers System.

The sellers themselves had their systems hacked and where effectively giving a live feed of every transaction to the Criminals as they occurred.

I thought this story may interest you.

Col

I was curious as a while back I wrote about how some English academics were able to crack a Chip and PIN PoS device -- supposedly not possible.

I'm betting the next step is to move to RFID PoS devices. They will say it's safer than card PoS devices, as it can be encased -- making the bad guys chuckle.

In the Darknet, it is rather easy to find (if you search well) for sale list of valid credit card numbers (in large quantities). They allow to perform purchase on the Net for instance, or to recreate some swipe cards. Usually, banks detect these frauds rather quickly by using pattern analysis. When your purchasing scheme deviates from your usual habits, banks react and check. Be aware that the card numbers are not only collected by breach in merchant servers, but also by skimming cards during legitimate transactions.
BTW,I suppose that you refer to 2010 Cambridge paper. Ross Anderson's team is great. You should read their latest hack on EMV implying skimming http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/unattack.pdf
About NFC chips, I don't believe that it will be claimed to be more secure. It will be claimed to be more convenient for the user.

I believe that was the team I interviewed -- very cool and sharp bunch. Thanks for the new link. I will give it a thorough read this weekend.

I'm working on NFC right now. I'll bet you know that Charlie Miller already compromised it.

I don't believe that's the case, certainly not for payments in the bricks and mortar world. As someone who has worked on my company's PCI compliance programme I'm confident that all the banks know is how much you spent and where. Now if "where" happens to be a car showroom, or a book shop for that matter, then they'll have a good idea of the kind of products you're purchasing, but that's as far as it goes.

And Pay by plastic the company providing the Payment gets a full list of everything you have bought and what each item costs to justify the finial price of the sale and Money transfer.

As a result the Banks sell those lists onto whom ever wants them The Supermarket also keeps lists like that but they are not linked to the Customer as much as the store what it sells and what it need to order. Though this is currently changing and the shops are becoming more and more involved in tracking individuals Purchases so that they can push advertising to them on things that they may want to buy.

The Banks on the other hand have a full list of your purchases so when they have a startup they can sell them lists of potential customers for their products in specific areas. Didn't you ever wonder while some areas where targeted with Mass Mail Outs of Sample Product and other areas where not?

Of course this is taken several steps further and the companies can now target individuals and hopefully increase their Market share at the expense of their competition.

Only times that this doesn't happen is when the industry is controlled and has to comply with Laws most companies do not have this restriction and make as much as they possibly can out of every sale that they make including the ones that get returned and the Fraudulent ones where they cover the costs in that sale not the banks who issue the cards.

Col

Maybe that happens in the US but I'm sure it's not the same on this side of the pond.

due to the companies making proprietary devices and using proprietary formats for the Kindle, Nook, e-pub etc it means there are formats that can be dropped if the company doesn't see enough profit, and thus what you've paid for is NOT readable - if you don't believe this, talk to people who have .lit books from the Microsoft Reader days.

I believe the companies should get into selling readers not private code translators. The e-books should be in basic html or something similar that can be read in any browser and the readers should be simple hand held light browsers. That way the books will be readable all over from just the one copy and always readable.

I write a lot of stories and at the moment I only make my books available as a printed book or a PDF file. I've recently learned that some of my books have been made available by one of my publishers as e-books via Amazon and B&N - but I don't like the way they no longer look like what I wrote due to the inability of those systems to handle basic formatting that any browser can to allow fro blocked text and three levels of headers. Now I shudder at the thought of how much people other than the readers may be digging into what my readers buy.

On that side I've reason to be concerned as I know one of my books has had copies bought by two different intelligence agencies due to the blurbs on them getting through their filters and triggering some alarms . That's what happens when you write a story about terrorism.

Thanks for the article and the fun way you presented it.

And I realize what you are saying. I think about it every time I buy an eBook. Up until four years ago, I felt the same way about PDF. I don't have a good answer for proprietary methods.

easy to get open source variants that work just as well, and often better.

I have several pdf files and they are not easy at all to read on mobile devices. That is my only real complaint. They do not reformat to small screen size like eBooks.

and a major reason why I advocate the use of basic html for creating e-books. Sadly B&N, Amazon, and Apple don't agree as they may lose some potential income in doing so. I think they'd gain more sales if they did.

How does the system work if there is no control over sharing copies?

that's obvious. but, in general, most people will pay a fair price for most things, just not a rip off price. Some people will go to a lot of trouble to make illegal copies of anything, but that happens with or without DRM. To me, there are two issues in regards to e-books and only one is about DRM.

I have no DRM on the electronic format books I sell as I allow the readers to have it able to be read on any device they have that can read the code, but I only use code that doesn't require a special device or may become obsolete within a few years. Thus my stories are available as html, .odt, or .pdf by me. One publisher has an arrangement for some via Amazon that I didn't know about until this month.

I've seen many complaints about DRM stopping people from reading stories because it's only available on one device, and then the Amazon case of 'steal the story back' adds to the problem, as does the issue of obsolete systems like the MS .lit files that few can use now.

I'd rather lose a few sales and have happy customers, than lose customers by draconian measures they don't like. You'd be surprised how many people refuse to buy those proprietary book formats. Anyway, a single sale lost is not huge money, and it's not like people are going to make millions of pirate copies to spread around the world.
..............

O have another issue with the proprietary e-book formats due to them not allowing for the e-book to look as clean and nice as the pdf or printed copy due to format deficiencies in the proprietary e-book formats.

I use Calibre to convert downloaded Library ebooks to a format for my wife's kindle, and also for my android tablet (Aldiko). I have just converted a pdf to 'mobi' format with this. It does it but not that well, which is a shame as it is difficult to read two-column pages on an e-reader. What about the effect here of the fact that many times while we are reading we are not connected to the Internet? What I hate is that I need that intermediary bit of software from a specialist supplier (Adobe) in order to download library e-books, as the actual file seems to come from a central resource, not the library.

15-20 years ago when I was trying to sell my science fiction stories to the pulps I had this whole scenario (and just about every other privacy concern) nailed. Editors loved my ideas, but no skilled writer be I.

And folks that knew me were worried that I was paranoid. A few who listened understood all you had to do was take current technology, push it out a decade or so and add as mix of the old human nature and voila! Everything governments and corporations do has an undercurrent of despotic command and control.

I also wrote about how toxic wastes that are expensive to dispose of properly were instead being sold at a profit to the would-be polluters as food ingredients, those additives with such concise names like "stabilizers," "artificial flavoring" and of course "red dye #2"... that story also turned out to be the sad truth. (wrote that one in 1984)

I keep crying from the wilderness over here... the first and foremost intended use of ANY technology is always evil. Has been since the days of pouring boiling oil off the parapets.

Really??? So how was the Walkman intended to be evil? How was the iPod intended to be evil? How was the automobile intended to be evil? How was the internal combustion engine intended to be evil? How was the wheel intended to be evil?

I'm sorry, but that is just dumb. I might agree that people can find a way to use nearly anything for "evil," but that's what people choose to do. That's like blaming the gun for someone getting shot. Or, as is popular in the media nowadays, blaming the SUV for whatever happens when someone is driving one.

not product. A universal difference. Look where the drive toward the "silicon fire" under our fingertips came from. It wasn't Japanese manufacturers of transistor radios and cheap toys.

And what proportion of all humanity that has ever been caught their first glimpse of a wheel attached to the chariots rampaging their village?

The best glaring example against my statement (nothing is ever absolute) is gunpowder. The Chinese used it for centuries and hadn't purposed it to violence until western Europeans showed up.

Hyperbole is a civilized substitute for profanity. Guilty as charged.

The Chinese invented the "fire arrow" (hollow arrow filled with gunpowder) by AD 989, not long after gunpowder was first created... and around the same time as the "peaceful" fireworks first came about.

They also created a lot of other explosives, including mortars & grenades, which they used well before they could have possibly been "corrupted" by "evil Western influences". Not to mention they created gunpowder rifles before "the West" did.

to their walkman to watch where they're going?

or at least oblivious, but not evil. =)

Kid staring at his phone, stepped right into the street without looking. He was bruised up but ok. Poor woman that hit him was a wreck, a cop asked me to talk to her (I was the best witness) so I kept assuring her she was in no way at fault.

I've dodged a few clueless texters, haven't collided with any yet.

I saw some pol in Jersey suggesting wearing headphones in public should be a misdemeanor. I think the law ended up being 'within X feet of a roadway.'

People ripped on him for being a "nanny state" control freak. My take is let the Darwin awards ensue. I think you have to be pretty stupid to wear headphones when riding a bicycle or jogging/walking around traffic. Just don't ruin my day by darting in front of me like the above (long hair, btw) teen.

O didn't hear the sound of the approaching ambulance until the car was four vehicles away. Luckily I saw the ambulance in my rearview mirror and started moving over and slowing down.

We were almost at the hospital entrance so I had a damn good idea where the ambulance was going. Sadly, the van was headed in the same gateway and turned across the clear oncoming traffic lane to make his turn as the ambulance was making the same turn from the other side of the road while passing me and the other stopped traffic. The van was a mess, and I bet he'll claim he didn't hear or see the ambulance. Plenty of witnesses, so the van driver is in more trouble than just being in the hospital bed. Due to the location there was no delay getting people into the ER. Just a fifty foot run with the gurney for each person.

That's arguably the first technology, and that was used to cook food before any pseudo-military applications came about. Not to mention that the use of plowshares, spears & bows as weapons of war predate the use of "specialized" designs like swords & pikes...but before they were used against fellow humans they were first tools of the hunter used to gather food.

But that's fine. If technology is so evil, then go "into the wildernes", and "live off the land", using nothing but your hands & fingernails. No fire, no Stone Age tools, let alone anything modern, & let us know how enjoyable it is to live without "evil technology".

people are

see my comment above

btw ever see 2001 A Space odyssey? Plausible opening sequence there...

In my more long-winded reply to your original comment. =)

And yes, I have seen "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Also, in reference to your comment above, where you mention people seeing wheels for the first time on chariots rampaging through their villages - that's still not the fault of the wheel. Kinda like the expression, "you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your relatives...(and you probably shouldn't pick your friend's nose)" =)

is a scene from a science-fiction movie -- emphasis on the "fiction" part -- based on a fictional novel?

I suppose, then, that we can make the same claims about the real world:
-- "sugar-coated" vampires are living in the Pacific Northwest (aka "Twlight")
-- fairy-tale monsters are actually human-looking species living among us, who can only be seen for their true selves if they decide to reveal it to us, or unless you happen to be descended from a group of knights from the 4th Crusade (aka "Grimm")...or were actually deposited in the Northeast USA through a catastrophic magic curse that removed nearly all of their memories (aka "Once Upon a Time")
-- the 'gods' worshipped by the ancient Greek, Roman & Egyptian cultures are not only alive & well, but are both interacting with & tied into the social, political, & cultural events of our modern world (see "Percy Jackson & The Olympians", "Heroes of Olympus", and "The Kane Chronicles")
-- the Seelie & Unseelie courts of the Sidhe/Faerie are also interacting with our modern-day culture, thanks to a treaty they signed with President Thomas Jefferson almost 200 years ago (see "Meredith Gentry" series)

No matter how it's researched, no matter how "logical" it may sound (or even how much it may match up with our personal worldviews, let alone meeting our "wish fulfillment" needs), fiction is just that: fiction. It's not factual (at least not 100%), which means it doesn't meet evidenciary requirements for supporting a scientific "theory" or "law". So while the scene of pseudo-apelike humanoids interacting with a giant, black rectangular solid was a nifty visual (whether seen in the movie or in our imagination from reading the novel), it doesn't mean it actually happened without providing documentable proof (i.e. archaelogical evidence).

Especially since, as we well know, films & novels can be modified (as in the infamous "Han shot first" debate)...

At a recent meeting of the writing group mentioned in the article, we were discussing the fictionality of fiction -- interesting topic to be sure. Could you further define what you see as the differences between fiction and non-fiction -- particularly related to evidenciary requirements.

it has no bearing on anything I have said. Your comprehension while reading my words appears to have been preloaded with a bias you have, whatever that bias may be is not obvious. (except perhaps hatred for me, driven by a need to vent spleen?)

To say I base ANYTHING on an offhand comment about a scene that I mentioned just because I suggested it was metaphorically possible is childish. My mention at all was to show I am not alone in holding that thought.

And nothing I said could possibly be construed as indicating I BELIEVE that scene to be real, either metaphorically or, as you imply, in fact.

But please, do continue with Michael's question, what you wrote is interesting (though totally inapplicable to anything I have stated) and MK has a good follow up Q. I'll keep reading the thread....

Were I live, the library system signed a deal with Adobe to provide the software to ensure DRM on eBooks "borrowed" from the library. To copy a book on to my Kobo I need an Adobe account, and they maintain a "library" of books I read. So, if I take a physical book form the library, the librarians will defend my right to privacy, but they have already signed away my digital right to privacy. It is one of the main reasons I don't use my Kobo very much.

I don't mind Amazon knowing everything I read on my Kindle. They use this information to suggest other books I might like, based on those I've already chosen. This benefits me by exposing me to new content I might otherwise have missed. Most importantly, the data is kept between Amazon and me, and it would be contrary to Amazon's best interests as a merchant to sell or expose the data to others.

While Amazon is a merchant, Google is an advertiser. It's in Google's interest to disseminate my personal information to anyone willing to pay for it. In my opinion, there's a huge difference between those business models, and it directly impacts on my privacy. Amazon wants to monetize my personal preferences, but in doing so they're motivated to keep my secrets. Google wants to monetize my data because selling data (and analytics) is what they do - it's how they make money. So Amazon's business model is served by using my data but keeping it private, while Google's is to sell my data to any and all who will pay for it.

Most everyone feels it's not good. How would you fix it?

Which is why I buy my eBooks from Baen EBooks. No DRM, no security issues. Besides, if you want to not have your reading monitored, then buy a hard copy. I mean it's the same idea with web surfing, visit the brick and mortar store and pick up the item.

If the government really wants to know what you are reading, all they have to do is accuse you of some illegal act and then raid your home and carry everything away.

I had not been aware of Baen EBooks. I am checking into it. Have you tried converting any books to the Kindle format for use on a smartphone?

the numerous stories on the CD are on it in multiple formats. They include HTML, EPUB (lists for Nook/Stanza/iPad), MOBIPOCKET (lists for Kindle/Palm/Blackberry), Sony Reader, Microsoft Reader, EBOOKWIZE and RTF. I assume you have all those choices on the website when you go to buy.

Yes, I have a couple of the BAEN DVDs that came with books. They include a lot of stories by other authors to get you interested in them.

Do any of those formats work well on smartphone-sized screens? My problem is that most do not and I read almost exclusively using my smartphone.

I would expect the html should render OK. But go to this URL and download a CD -

http://baencd.thefifthimperium. com/

remove the space before the com to make it work.

With a smartphone/iPod-type device, the HTML formats will show up as a smaller text. As long as their font sizes aren't hardcoded into the pages, you either make sure your browser settings allow for dynamic resizing, or you edit the HTML files so that they look larger.

Not sure about the other formats. It might depend on the app you're using to read them. I use the OverDrive Console app to read eBooks from my local library for free, & it allows for a few different text sizes (not to mention a nice "white text on black background" option for readability).

The question is what reader are you using. Taking the amazon kindle software android/iphone for example, it is capable of reading the mobipocket (.mobi) format provided on the later dvds or all new free/paid versions. If it is one of the older cd disks at thefifthimperium then the pdb/prc format may not work. In which case it is i) probably available on the the baen ebooks website in .mobi format or ii) send it to your kindle email account and they will convert it to the kindle .azw format and deliver it to your devices. Bare in mind the mobipocket format predates the kindle. I used to read them on a little palm pilot with a 160x160 matrix screen with no problems, you just need to change the display font if necessary.

Michael,
I buy lots of E-books, from a wide variety of vendors. I have bought two or three from Amazon, but I was very disappointed by the results.

You see, I own my E-books. Yes, I do! That's because I insist on buying only from vendors who offer E-books without DRM, and who sell just the books, not the entire "reading experience."

While it isn't as convenient as being able to open up the "store" on a reader, select a book, and begin reading it immediately, the separation between the mechanics of the sale of the book and the mechanics of the reading of the book is what preserves my privacy.

I'm just not willing to put myself in the position of giving anybody a monopoly on my reading. Because I buy my E-books from many different vendors, no one vendor has that collection of information about what I am reading. Because I read my E-books using software that was developed by, and is distributed by, an organization that doesn't sell E-books, I am reasonably confident that the reader isn't collecting information.

For a while, I was willing to use the Kindle software that Amazon made available to run on general-purpose devices (such as desktop computers and smart phones). However, when Amazon "upgraded" the version of the Kindle Reader for the Android platform so that it would read only books purchased from Amazon (this may have been a bug introduced by the developers, but Amazon made no move to correct the issue), I removed all Kindle software from my devices.

I now use third-party software that enables me to search for E-books on-line, download the purchased (and free) E-books into a library, catalog the library, and maintain the collections of books on my various devices. That's sufficiently convenient for me, and it ensures that I am not the captive customer of any company.

If it's by plastic then you are telling the Bank what you are buying, from who, when and how much.

They sell that data to whoever asks.

Col

Actually, the credit card company doesn't get nearly as much information as you think.

As @regnart already pointed out, all the payment processor knows is the same information you see on your statement: where you made a purchase, and how much you paid. They don't know what you're buying (of course, if you're buying from an on-line bookseller, like Baen Books, it's pretty obvious that you're buying a book, but not which one).

The seller has a lot more information. If you use a "loyalty card" at the grocery store, the grocery chain collects information on the individual items you buy, as well as the time of day, location, etc. Just as I buy my books from many different vendors (so that no one vendor has a complete picture of my reading), I buy my groceries from several different chains.

But, at least today, the detailed information about specific items you purchase never makes it to any central repository.