Is there any privacy issues with eBook and user privacy?

[LFC18]

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I recently brought Kindle Fire to read my favorite books in eBook format. I have read some books like ’50 Shades of Grey’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’. I downloaded from Amazon and have been reading them. While reading I felt that Kindle Fire keeps tracking our progress and loading the data on their servers. I am not much worried about who knows what I read and what I don’t, but should I worry about the privacy? Like I don’t want anyone to know what my choices are or how much I read at a time and other such minute details. I wanted to know if I should be concerned about the privacy.

[Sib Bachchan]

I too feel worried that nowadays an eBook and an eBook reader are snooping into our private space too much. Like while reading on my iPad, I always get notifications like share this part on twitter or share this part on Facebook. I mean who wants to reveal on the social networking sites what they are reading and what they liked. Also there are so many friends and followers on these social networking sites; I don’t think everybody must be interested in reading novels so that they will take interest in the content we share. I think that it is pure breach of privacy. I think that if eBook readers can connect to our social networking sites, then it might lead to lack of privacy.

[BBC123]

The eBook readers made by Kindle give advertisements related to the content we are reading. For example, recently I was Sherlock Holmes and while reading I would get advertisements suggest me that I should also try other books of detective type available on internet. So I think that these eBook readers keep tracking what we read and our preferences are. If they can send me related advertisements, it means that they are tracking my reading habits and choices. I have some more books in my Kindle why is it not tracking me for other books. I have lately not read them and I think that the time for which I read a specific book is also counted and tracked. I think it is complete loss of privacy.

[Rashid]

Many eBook readers provide the feature to mark a specific part of text and keep it for later use. But nowadays, many eBook readers when some text is marked it will pop out a text box asking one to tweet about it or maybe share it on Facebook or sometimes even search related stuff on Google. I think that this data must be first going in some server which then must be going on other websites. Recently there was a hack done on Sony’s server which led to compromise of all the passwords, credit card details and personal details of people using it. If in case anybody hacks the server for Kindle or other servers where our data goes to, maybe they will get our purchase details and passwords for social networking sites. I too think that this eBooks and eBook readers are threat to user’s privacy.

[Non-$ensoi]

One feature about the Kindle Fire that creeps me out is the sync with other devices. I mean if the device can connect to each other to keep the track of the page number and the line till which we have read an eBook. So if I have stopped reading the book on page number 20, the Kindle Fire will mark it.

It will send the data to other devices that have been connected and have same eBook in them. So if this working is observed, then the data must be first sent to the server allocated for synchronization, from this server it will send data to other devices like smartphones, PCs and other devices that must be connected.

So this means that just for sake of saving the place on the book where we had finished reading, we compromise our privacy.

[Lennon Norris]

As the technology advances, so will the threat to security advance. I still prefer the good old hard copies of the books. The only person who knows where I have read till is only me and no one else. No one can track me to the page where I am reading. Only the shopkeeper from whom I buy the books will know which books I usually buy. Also it won’t matter to him much. He won’t go on spreading the words that I read ’50 shades of gray’ or which another book. No one will force me to share my views every time I find something interesting. So it’s just good old real books for me.