Kobo e-readers collect telemetry on your sideloaded books, and there's no official way to opt out

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

If you are willing to keeping it offline and sideloading everything with calibre, why not use an open source one instead?

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.

It’s so easy! It’s a great decision

Mine basically never connected again after Pocket was shut down. I feel like the only one around who didn’t think it was another Mozilla bullshit project, it was neat to bookmark some longer reads and then have them offline on an ereader.

i have multiple times my Color 2 because it was buggy as fuck (I bought it on release) and they added a nice fix for an issue.

1. I'd open the device to keep reading a book and it would be at some random page and not that page I had closed it at, this seems to have been fixed and it was super annoying going back 100 pages to find where I was at.

2. When the device was put down with the cover folded back, you could not start it again without moving the cover aside to get to the power switch, they fixed this by letting to use a page turn button as a power switch if it was switched off, excellent fix for an an annoying problem.

Still getting some of my books through overdrive

Yes, and The code is pretty self-explanatory.

If you’re interested in looking further:

Kobo’s current privacy policy says it collects reading-related usage information, including how often and for how long you consume digital content, as well as the genres, authors, and subjects you read.

Kobo’s Terms of Use contain a particularly relevant event explicitly called “Sideload,” which is described as occurring “when a user sideloads an EPUB.” So Kobo’s software does have telemetry associated with the act of sideloading.

what’s the point of what? Yes you can turn off wifi to keep them from collecting telemetry, but that's not an ideal solution.

Maybe simply to get better recommendations on their stores?

I guess it depends on how much you value your own right to privacy. If you don’t mind being deprived of it, then sure, it’s not 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.

No, they require a login to initialize these days

The code is pretty self-explanatory.

If you’re interested in looking further:

Kobo’s current privacy policy says it collects reading-related usage information, including how often and for how long you consume digital content, as well as the genres, authors, and subjects you read.

Kobo’s Terms of Use contain a particularly relevant event explicitly called “Sideload,” which is described as occurring “when a user sideloads an EPUB.” So Kobo’s software does have telemetry associated with the act of sideloading.

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.