Quote:
Originally Posted by GA Russell
I find it interesting that the OP asks, "What does Amazon know about what I have on my eBook reader?", and most of the responses (instead of answering the question) say "Don't worry about it."
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If you've got Whispernet enabled then they'll know what specific Amazon Kindle store items you've got on there and just the filenames of whatever personal documents you've put on are. If you've got Whispersync enabled then they'll know what your last read time, last read page, annotations and names of items inside your collections.
At no point do they actually send the contents of any file back to Amazon. Annotation data is used so they can generate the popular highlights feature but they only use the locations you've annotated/highlighted and not your actual annotations. Collections and annotations are synced so you can share it between all the devices linked to your Amazon account. Nobody else gets this data.
There is nothing stopping you from naming a document about cupcakes recipes something else like My Super Secret Journal. All Amazon will know is that you've got "My Super Secret Journal" but they have no idea what it contains.
As with everybody else, I agree with them in saying that I wouldn't worry about it. Amazon aren't going to start publishing your reading lists.
The 1984 fiasco which everybody likes to bring up is a special case. Amazon was in a no win situation. As anybody can publish a book for the Kindle on the Kindle store, you get situations like 1984 where somebody published it without the right to publish. At this point, Amazon has two choices. They can get rid of the book and face the wrath of users or not get rid of the book and face the wrath of the real publishers and potentially the courts. I'd like to see the people who raged at Amazon in this situation and how they'd handle it :P