Amazon removed books from my Kindle

[haertig]

Originally Posted by jlinear

After Amazon deleted books from both a Paperwhite and Scribe, I created a rule on my firewall (pfSense) denying them access to the Internet. I can still safely connect to my home WiFi and transfer files wirelessly from Calbre to KOReader.

That should work fine too. Just don't forget to put the rule back in place before unleashing a new router on the internet, should you ever replace your current one.

--- Off-track discussion of additional security measures that might be of interest to some ---

I have a VLAN named "Blackhole" set up that I'll connect new, untrusted devices too. Some devices require you to access them over the network for setup and configuration. Anyway, Blackhole is blocked by the firewall from initiating any outgoing connections to the WAN, receiving any incoming connections from the WAN, and ditto for any connection attempts to my other VLANs. It's an isolated island of a VLAN. I can temporarily log my laptop onto the Blackhole VLAN to do setup/configuration of untrusted devices. But not before I boot that laptop from a thumbdrive and load the entire Linux OS into its RAM, with no data persistence allowed. Thus any nefarious stuff the untrusted device might attempt will only affect the laptops RAM image, which is ccleared when I later power it down and reboot it from its normal SSD. I can also monitor connection attempts from Blackhole out to the WAN to see if the untrusted device is actually doing something untrustworthy. Once I have convinced myself as much as possible that the untrusted device is at least somewhat trustworthy, I'll move it to my "IoT" (Internet Of Things) VLAN. That VLAN can get out to the internet, but it still can't touch any of my other VLANs that host other computers with more sensitive stuff on them. Occasionally I will have to open a very limited firewall hole for some specific home computer to initiate a connection to a device on the IoT VLAN. That is usually limited to a specific IP address and specific port(s) on both ends. I only have one firewall hole allowing the IoT VLAN to initiate a connection to my server VLAN. This is limited to a recipient single IP address and port. That's so the IoT devices can publish MQTT messages to my MQ server (these are cameras sending "motion detected" messages). The MQ server is somewhat sandboxed in a Docker container, and other devices can subscribe to the MQ topics.

[kbullet]

For me I have the wifi on all the time (I use it mainly for reading challenges and goodread sync). Again my suspicion is as long as you don't toggle the airplane mode, it won't nuke your library. i.e. Where i've had my kindle connected to wifi over a year without an issue even long periods of being not connected to the internet (no known SSID). Only just the other day I inadvertently toggled the airplane mode then it nuked my library the same day.

Not a huge deal since now since i've learnt my lesson and have calibre flow setup and ready to restore my sideloaded library relatively quickly. Even more so now that Librarian sync is working on my jailbroken kindles.

[JBaby]

Originally Posted by kbullet

For me I have the wifi on all the time (I use it mainly for reading challenges and goodread sync). Again my suspicion is as long as you don't toggle the airplane mode, it won't nuke your library. i.e. Where i've had my kindle connected to wifi over a year without an issue even long periods of being not connected to the internet (no known SSID). Only just the other day I inadvertently toggled the airplane mode then it nuked my library the same day.

Not a huge deal since now since i've learnt my lesson and have calibre flow setup and ready to restore my sideloaded library relatively quickly. Even more so now that Librarian sync is working on my jailbroken kindles.

Same. I only turn on airplane when away from home for the day, but even then I’ll likely hotspot to my phone at some point in the day. I want to be able to use all of the features and that requires being connected.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by JBaby

I want to be able to use all of the features and that requires being connected.

That was their plan all along. I'm not saying those features you like are bad. But they were provided to you "at no cost" for a reason. And you nailed that reason.

[JBaby]

Originally Posted by haertig

That was their plan all along. I'm not saying those features you like are bad. But they were provided to you "at no cost" for a reason. And you nailed that reason.

See I don’t see those features as being “at no cost”. These are features I paid for so I’m going to use them.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by JBaby

See I don’t see those features as being “at no cost”.

I don't see them as being free either, which is why I put "at no cost" in quotes. Granted, for a different reason than you consider them not free. But if they are useful features to you, of course, use them.

I used to be heavily against "a listening device in my home". But after years of that stance guess what? I now have Alexa devices in my home. I weighed the privacy concerns against benefits that I perceive and I chose the latter as most important in my particular situation. You are doing the exact same thing. I have no qualms regarding that. I know that there are reasons that Amazon sold me these Alexa devices super cheap and are not charging me a monthly fee to use them. And those reasons are for their benefit, not mine. The same goes for hooking up an eReader to Amazon's network. There's nothing wrong with making a decision that is different than the decision that someone else would have made. We should all try to be aware of the components that are in play as best we can however.

[jacobh]

Not sure if what I'm seeing is related to this or not.

My entire library view on the Kindle is now showing empty. I can download books from my cloud library and they show, but nothing that was already on my kindle.

The thing is the files haven't been deleted. Calibra also sees them in the main memory for the device. They are all still on the Kindle in the expected folders, so I'm not sure if it's the same issue as books generally being deleted. I noticed it after transferring a book in Calibre (I didn't check immediately after), but my Kindle was in airplane mode that entire time. A restart didn't help.

Has anyone seen similar and now how to fix this?

[acprinter]

Originally Posted by jacobh

Not sure if what I'm seeing is related to this or not.

My entire library view on the Kindle is now showing empty. I can download books from my cloud library and they show, but nothing that was already on my kindle.

The thing is the files haven't been deleted. Calibra also sees them in the main memory for the device. They are all still on the Kindle in the expected folders, so I'm not sure if it's the same issue as books generally being deleted. I noticed it after transferring a book in Calibre (I didn't check immediately after), but my Kindle was in airplane mode that entire time. A restart didn't help.

Has anyone seen similar and now how to fix this?

Something similar happened to me the other day. I transferred books from
Calibre to my Kindle. Calibre showed the books as being on the Kindle, but when I disconnected from Calaibe they did not show up.

I did not fuss over it I just sent the books to my Kobo. Problem solved.

[Willow5613]

Originally Posted by jacobh

Not sure if what I'm seeing is related to this or not.

My entire library view on the Kindle is now showing empty. I can download books from my cloud library and they show, but nothing that was already on my kindle.

The thing is the files haven't been deleted. Calibra also sees them in the main memory for the device. They are all still on the Kindle in the expected folders, so I'm not sure if it's the same issue as books generally being deleted. I noticed it after transferring a book in Calibre (I didn't check immediately after), but my Kindle was in airplane mode that entire time. A restart didn't help.

Has anyone seen similar and now how to fix this?

This sounds like what happened to me. I could only fix it by factory resetting my kindle (which forced me to connect to their servers) and resending my books. I ordered a kobo the next day.

[jacobh]

Originally Posted by acprinter

Something similar happened to me the other day. I transferred books from
Calibre to my Kindle. Calibre showed the books as being on the Kindle, but when I disconnected from Calaibe they did not show up.

I did not fuss over it I just sent the books to my Kobo. Problem solved.

Originally Posted by Willow5613

This sounds like what happened to me. I could only fix it by factory resetting my kindle (which forced me to connect to their servers) and resending my books. I ordered a kobo the next day.

Thank you both.

I think whatever happened in my case is different. Re-transferring through Calibre works without a reset and since none of the files were actually deleted it just overrides the book file and keeps all my metadata intact. All my bookmarks, whether I've finished reading it or not, etc.

Maybe something went wrong with the last transfer and whatever index/cache the Kindle uses got cleared out and wouldn't rescan on a restart.

Fair point on the Kobo, but I don't have one.