[bonacker]

I recently bought the cheapest Kindle e-reader. I think it's called the Kindle 6, but I've seen different model numbers for it. Amazon introduced it in October '14. It seems to have the same firmware as the new Paperwhite.

I found something interesting that I thought I'd post: Even when the power is off, the Kindle phones home. I saw this while looking through the log of my WiFi router. It went to Amazon.com. This means that "off" doesn't really mean power off.

If the WiFi is disabled with Airplane Mode on, I assume the phoning home proclivity can not over-ride Airplane Mode, but I often forget to turn Airplane Mode on. I'll be keeping an eye on my router log to see if it also phones home with Airplane Mode on.

I realize that the Kindle is going to communicate with Amazon for various reasons (I have the model that displays downloaded ads), but since the universally held assumption about power buttons is that power buttons turn off the power to devices completely, this seems to me sneaky.

One possibility is that the device will activate its WiFi on a plane or other place where WiFi should not be used, with the user confident that that couldn't happen, because the power has been switched off.