About the subscription. That seemed to me to defeat the purpose of having the hardware device.
Correct. Read
Ledger Recovery - Send your (encrypted) recovery phrase to 3rd parties entities for all the reasons why this is a very, very bad idea.
But are you saying that the nano 3 (itself) is not a cold wallet?
A cold wallet is by definition a wallet that's never been connected to the internet. A hardware wallet that has the ability to broadcast it's seed phrase is a flaming hot wallet.
or only not so, if you get the recovery subscription?
That's the thing with Ledger: you don't know! With a cold wallet, you're
certain your private keys have never touched an online device.
Update Again:Unregistering was easy. So now, I'm on my own. All I had to do was follow the Recovery link, navigate to Manage my account[/b], and delete my login. Then confirm through a link sent to my email. According to the responsie it says "unregistered". Easy Peasy.
Is it? Are you sure?
Can you be sure? If you told me your seed phrase, and I told you I deleted it, would you trust me?
You should assume your seed phrase is now compromised. Don't fund it. You could reset the Ledger and create a new one, but are you willing to trust Ledger now that you know the hardware wallet can "call home" to share your seed phrase? Note that Ledger literally lied about the security of their devices: first, they said it's impossible for the seed phrase to leave the secure element. Then, they created a "subscription service" that literally extracts the seed phrase from your device. Are you willing to risk your money with a company that lies about it's core business?
So Ledger set up it's "recovery" subscription in such a way that they trick new users into subscribing and sharing their seed phrase? Damn!