[BCharlie]

I mention that the data that appears to be used for those purposes is sent again in a separate request to a separate end point, so we have two types of requests: last read location, and reading analytics. Sorry it wasn't clear, I'll try to improve the wording.

[falcolas]

Will you also be updating and noting that the requests to Wikipedia and Bing are for explicit customer-benefiting features?

Might be worth noting that you can opt out of their data collection (on the e-reader, at a minimum) as well. Settings > Device Options > Advanced Options > Privacy or in the device management console in your account on amazon.com

[danShumway]

The text in question:

> Highlighting or tapping any word will send the requests with the text to Bing Translate and Wikipedia, as well as back to Amazon.

Is there a reason why that text needs to be sent before the user clicks the "translate" button? Is there a reason why it needs to be sent to Amazon?

[halbritt]

> Might be worth noting that you can opt out of their data collection (on the e-reader, at a minimum) as well. Settings > Device Options > Advanced Options > Privacy or in the device management console in your account on amazon.com

Good tip, I'm going to give this a whirl. Unfortunately, all the network calls add a significant amount of latency even if one didn't care about privacy.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Can you provide the URLs so we can use pihole to block the requests?

[boogies]

(off-topic) What’re the advantages of pihole over /etc/hosts?

[Hitton]

I liked the article. If you are gonna update it, please consider also mentioning technical aspect. Frankly, Amazon snooping on users is to be expected, but short mention of app for which platform have you analysed using which tools would be welcome addition.

[ballenf]

> Frankly, Amazon snooping on users is to be expected

Snooping on users during e-commerce transactions, sure.

But recording user's detailed interactions with every ebook? I hope that's a big surprise to your average Kindle user.

It would be great to see a data request response and how much of this data is retained and for how long. It's clearly not anonymized at the request level.

Very easy to see a future where just reading certain books or reading certain books too many times could flag you as dangerous or be used to support a mental incompetence hearing resulting in loss of rights.