How does Amazon know what's on my Kindle?

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by Alisa

Unless they decide violate their ToS and send information without notifying you. They're working at the OS level. They can definitely do that. They likely don't because the PR fallout would be absolutely huge for the small benefit they would get out of it.

They can do it but as you said, the benefits are not worth the disaster if anybody found out. It'd also be illegal in various countries. If you're running beta software then you agree to have this sort of thing happen as part of the testing agreements usually.

Originally Posted by Alisa

Same with Amazon. They could look at all my documents but if it got out that they were doing that, it would make their 1984 fiasco look like nothing. All it would take would be one employee leaking it to a blog. I doubt they're that stupid.

Pretty much.

[carld]

I don't think Amazon cares one bit, nor do they know or catalog, what personal documents you have on your Kindle.

I don't even think what happened with 1984 was intentional. They deleted the book from their servers, as was right and proper, but it had the unintended effect of deleting the book from user's Kindles as well.

If it was discovered that Amazon was snooping into user's documents, it'd make the overblown fuss over 1984 look like an amusing little side show next to a giant three ring circus.

[geemac]

I do believe if you don't connect to the Kindle servers at least once a week. The Kindle fairy comes around at night to check your Kindle for non Amazon content

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by carld

I don't think Amazon cares one bit, nor do they know or catalog, what personal documents you have on your Kindle.

I don't even think what happened with 1984 was intentional. They deleted the book from their servers, as was right and proper, but it had the unintended effect of deleting the book from user's Kindles as well.

If it was discovered that Amazon was snooping into user's documents, it'd make the overblown fuss over 1984 look like an amusing little side show next to a giant three ring circus.

If I recall correctly, it was the refund they issued which caused the automatic deletion. And they absolutely had to refund it otherwise they would be profiting from the copyright infringement which is a serious legal matter here in the US.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by durkinrobinson

You'd think they'd be on top of privacy concerns. This is the reason why a lot of people won't purchase e-readers - they are paranoid and prefer not to be monitored.

They do have a pretty rigorous privacy policy.

[haroldgh]

Now that kindles support wifi, it should be easy enough to capture and analyze all traffic coming from the device. I googled around a bit and was surprised that nobody has done it yet. Would be a neat project.

[wesleyer]

Originally Posted by haroldgh

Now that kindles support wifi, it should be easy enough to capture and analyze all traffic coming from the device. I googled around a bit and was surprised that nobody has done it yet. Would be a neat project.

If they are using HTTPS (which they should), this would only capture the (useless) encrypted stream. But it's worth a try.

[haroldgh]

True. I suppose you could do it on a rooted kindle2 and catch the data earlier yet, rendering the 3G/wifi issue moot.

[softshell]

i've never owned a kindle (k3 shipping out soon i hope) but never really thought about the privacy issues. can amazon legally do anything about the content on your kindle? i'm obviously not going to start loading it with pirated books, but can they brick it or something if they do a 'scan' and notice that it contains copyrighted content that wasn't purchased?

[babyd]

I really wouldn't worry about it too much, I did have the same worries but if they did anything like that the backlash would destroy them. I really think, while they maybe can see whats there, that they only monitor system stuff and amazon titles for backup reasons. Plus they don't hold the copyright on the books anyway, and it s the copyright holder that acts. I use my kindle for Amazon books and drm free books anyway, but I have heard of many others who load anything on it with no action ever being taken.