Troubleshooting Does resetting Amazon passwords reset your Kindle?

[PolyWogg]

My Kindle froze yesterday, reset, and wiped everything. Not 100% sure why. But took me back to "Welcome to Kindle...". When I tried to reconnect to Amazon, it was like it had never heard of my Kindle before. Logged back in, it still had all my purchases, but I would have to reload them. Things previously transferred via Calibre were all gone, 100% wiped to default setup. No big deal, it is easily recovered.

For larger context, I got hacked earlier this week for social media and for my Amazon account at least briefly before I recovered and changed all the passwords. Resetting passwords that way shouldn't lock out devices, though, would it?

But why would a hacker bother to delete my devices, to stop me from getting back in perhaps? It doesn't do anything though. The rest of the account is as it was -- nothing new done, no purchases charged, no orders, nothing else deleted, full history there.

But now I'm wondering about something. With a lot of account resets, across platforms, it gives you the option for example in your mail accounts to lock out all other devices that currently have access. I don't remember Amazon asking that, but if it did, I would have said yes. Would THAT not only log out Kindles but also delete them?

I initially thought it was unrelated to the hack, just something really egregious in my Kindle. Or maybe it was Amazon forcing people to update their firmware by forcing resets. But while a file corruption could bork my Kindle somehow, there's no way it would have deleted the account that I can think of. Unless it's a handshake thing...

But my son's Kindle was also removed. That can't be related to MY Kindle being borked.

So my list of causes was:
a. Kindle file borking Kindle -- eliminated as likely cause
b. Amazon hacker deleting Kindles -- not likely
c. Amazon password reset deleting Kindles -- weird if done directly
d. Amazon "lock out other access" also deleting Kindles -- A little aggressive without any warning it would also WIPE my Kindles of all the content on it too.

As I said at the top, no real "damage", just annoying reloading of stuff. But if anyone as any experience with (c) or (d) or views in general, all welcome!

On the positive side, a previous known problem with Kindles has been fixed sometime without my noticing. When Canadian Kindle owners migrated from US accounts, anything that was tied to US subscription service feeds (even free) for newspapers, magazines, etc. came with it -- but they couldn't be deleted from .COM or .CA site. Support requests with Amazon were basically responded to with "suck it up buttercup". I gave up trying to remove the titles from account 3 years ago. With the complete reset and reload, I tried deleting one just to make sure there was no DL with it -- and it deleted the title completely. I could remove ALL of them now.

[jonathan2022]

Automatically when you sign out of amazon on any device for whatever reason. password reset etc. it deletes everything including both purchased and side loaded books. when you resign in it only restores purchased content connected to your account. it wont restore side loaded books that were sent via usb. only books connected via send to kindle which are attached to account. if it had been a hacker they would have either changed passwords or closed accounts. hackers usually try inflict as much damage as possible.

[vermontcathy]

Originally Posted by jonathan2022

Automatically when you sign out of amazon on any device for whatever reason. password reset etc. it deletes everything including both purchased and side loaded books.

This is not true, at least not on the K3s that I've been replacing the batteries on. (I buy K3s that need batteries, buy batteries, viola, functional kindles). I've loaded both books and games (active content) onto them, and deregistered them, and the content stays. I've even reregistered them to a different account, just to make sure that's not the point that content is removed.

I feel I've done this on newer kindles, and the Amazon-bought content may go away, but sideloaded content (and stuff sent via Send to Kindle) never gets removed.