More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
Amazon now tracking highlighted passages from Kindle users by Brad Vertrees
May 1, 2010 | 10:14 am
|
By a TeleRead Contributor
Amazon is not only tracking Kindle users highlighted passages, they are also advertising the fact. While this might make for an interesting study in what readers find important in a particular book, my big question is: Does this mean privacy should be compromised?
I first saw this story on Mediabistro, which gave a rather simplistic, non critical post of this new Amazon practice. I did a quick Google search and found another, more critical article from Bnet Amazon risks Kindle sales by tracking, reporting what readers highlight. This fact that Amazon is now tracking your ebook highlights begs other questions: What else are they tracking? What about annotated comments?
The Bnet article brings up a very valid point, one that I think anyone concerned about privacy in this digital age should fear:
I don’t have a dark past and, knock on wood, don’t have a dark future ahead, but any information I deem important in my book library can now be used as ammunition against me.
The article continues:
The most disturbing issue here isn’t Amazon’s data gathering and the public listing, or even the potential for the information to be passed to authorities deemed worthy by the company. No, the problem here is context — as in, there is none.
Another good point is also highlighted in this article. If one were to purchase a book like The Anarchists Cookbook is nothing to get excited about. No doubt it’s an interesting read (I have never read it myself). But what about when someone starts highlighting specific passages that can steer towards the area of intent? Will Amazon use this information and turn it over to authorities?
Amazon may claim they don’t collect any personal information along with users highlighted passages. But let’s be real. They can easily collect such information and despite what their defense of this practice might be, I’m sure they do collect this type of information. Scary!
Some might say I’m just once again bashing Amazon and the Kindle. This might be especially ironic considering I am an Amazon affiliate and frequently advertise the Kindle here on Brad’s Reader. That may be so, but I do think the Kindle is a good ereader and everyone I have spoken to who owns a Kindle absolutely loves the device. Also, by unleashing the Kindle upon the world, Amazon really threw ebooks into the forefront of literary culture and made ebooks a viable alternative to traditional print media.
Privacy is the real issue here. Kindle users should expect a reasonable amount of privacy when using Amazon’s product. Whatever the reasons are for readers to highlight a particular passage, it’s only their business, not Amazon’s. The fallout from this could be like when Amazon decided to remotely pull the novel 1984 from users who had bought the ebook.
What do you think of this new practice by Amazon? Should Kindle users even care, or is this an invasion of privacy? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
UPDATE: I contacted Amazon to try and get more information about this new practice. Will follow-up after hearing back.
Editor’s Note: The above is reprinted, with permission, from Brad’s Reader. PB
|
Related Posts:
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
That’s exactly why I did set up a special Amazon account for my Kindle, paying only with gift codes. I de-DRM every book I buy and use the “backup” for reading on the kindle. I can not use the sync mechanism this way, but I can easily live with that.
Some writers put their unpublished books on the Kindle to work on them in the final stages of editing.
Does this mean that Amazon can post that, as well? Can they tell the difference between original and published material?
Amazon so doesn’t get privacy issues.
I think people are missing a lot of key details regarding this issue. They are merely showing you what the most popular highlights are. It would be the same as a public library not erasing highlights from the book you are borrowing. The previous user’s identity and/or personal information has not been compromised. I have actually used the feature that some people are complaining about and have found nothing wrong with their approach. It merely tells you what the most popular highlights are and how many people have done so. I find it comical because Amazon is also including the ability for kindlers to post their book quotes on their Twitter and Facebook accounts, yet not one person has raised a red flag for something which provides less privacy than the “popular highlight” feature.
I wrote a longish response AT the BTnet site on this bit of hysteria.
Go to Facebook and accept an app — they will all tell you this will allow them to acquire info on ALL your friends, and people actually click on that easily so they can play a little quiz and broadcast their scores. I won’t touch a Facebook app and I ignore all notes to me to try an app. Facebook keeps picking up data and broadcasting it by default and THEN asks you after getting pressure, if you’d like to turn it off.
But this is aggregated impersonal data and if anyone fears the server backups of highlights (or more-reasonably fears backup of your notes), then turn that OFF – by simply DISABLING annotation-backup under MenuSettings.
If you do make notes electronically on the Kindle instead of hand-doing them privately, then move the associated file to your computer if you ever log on to Amazon and ‘sync’ … but as I mentioned, you can turn off the Annotations backup. If you don’t trust them even then, don’t make notes on the Kindle. Better yet, don’t buy one. You’d be a mess because it has all kinds of features like syncing so that you can go to another device and read from the page you last read. That takes server collection of where you were in the book.
So you lose some server sync’g – so what? At least you won’t have to worry yourself sick. Over nothing. Amazon MIGHT have to turn over your annotations if you’re suspected of murder and there are legal orders for them to do that.
In the meantime does anyone really believe anyone at Amazon cares about our highlighting except to use popularity (as with their book rankings and recommendations) to SELL and market the books? THAT is their interest.
Few of us are so interesting. If you ARE that interesting though, please Disable Annotations or just stay away from online sites and electronic data collecting which happens almost everytime you sign on to a site.
It’s hard work trying to find and make a big deal out of this one. It’s an option — those who feel they can benefit from it use it.
I’m one. Those who don’t like the idea should not use it but not try to ruin a useful feature for those who love to highlight and then review their highlights on one page. It’s especially good for bookclubs.
For those who don’t know what the password-protected annotations page looks like for any of us using the feature, here is one short one I use for an example:
http://bit.ly/kwebnotesample
Can you feel the sleep coming on from reading even one of these?
What scares me about this is people’s reaction. It implies that people didn’t know this. Everything whispersync syncs Amazon knows. They have to, in order to sync it like they do.