Aug 26, 2020 19:00:00

How much data does Amazon collect user data through Kindle?

Amazon Kindle offers various services related to e-books, such as e-books, e-book readers, and e-book reading apps. Kindle has various functions such as collecting user data and suggesting products based on browsing history, but

DuckDuckGo shows what kind of data Amazon actually collects from users through Kindle. Engineer Charlie is investigating.

Kindle Collects a Surprisingly Large Amount of Data
https://nullsweep.com/kindle-collects-a-surprisingly-large-amount-of-data/

Charlie was a Kindle enthusiast who has gotten it from the 2007 Kindle 1 to the 2018 Kindle Paperwhite . However, there are some cases where Amazon deletes books downloaded by users from Kindle, and some cases where Amazon unilaterally deletes user accounts and makes the purchased books inaccessible, so distrust of Amazon I heard that I recruited.

By collecting data such as user usage status, Kindle is equipped with a function to synchronize bookmarks, memos, last read page, etc. between terminals, and display recommended books based on browsing history I am. Charlie wondered, 'Is the Kindle really collecting only the data that's needed for the service?' and started investigating what kind of data the Kindle is actually sending to Amazon.

As a result of the survey, Charlie said, 'Kindle collects device information and usage metadata by linking it to an account. Opening an app, reading a book, turning a page, closing a book. Every time, more than 100 pieces of data were sent to Amazon's servers, which basically means that the Kindle keeps track of everything you do while reading.'

The Kindle also collects information from all loaded pages, such as 'time the page was opened,' 'first letter of the page,' 'last letter of the page,' 'whether the page is an image or text.' That. When the user highlighted or tapped a word, the request was sent to

Bing and Wikipedia along with the text, as well as to Amazon. In addition, Charlie found that the personal information of the user was also collected and the country of residence, IP address, terminal screen size, terminal manufacturer, software version, etc. were sent to Amazon.

Most of the data collected by Kindle seems to be stored locally and then uploaded to Amazon's server. Even if the user is offline, the collected data is stored and seems to be sent together when it comes online.

'The Kindle wasn't a big privacy breach, but it recorded a lot of unexpected information. I spent about a year trying to leave the Kindle and now I use Marvin on my iPhone to read ebooks. I'm dying for e-paper, but I don't have a Kindle anymore,' Charlie commented.