Read Something Else: Collect & Dubious Wit & Wisdom of Lemony Snicket
Westward hen I requested my personal information from Amazon this month under California's new privacy constabulary, I received mostly what I expected: my order history, shipping data and customer support conversation logs.
But tucked into the dozens of files were also two Excel spreadsheets, more than xx,000 lines each, with titles, time stamps and actions detailing my reading habits on the Kindle app on my iPhone.
I now know that on 15 February 2019 starting at 4.37pm, I read The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish – a dark novel by Katya Apekina – for xx minutes and 30 seconds. On 5 January 2019 starting at 6.27pm, I read the apocalypse-thriller Severance by Ling Ma for 31 minutes and 40 seconds. Starting at 2.12pm on 3 November 2018, I read mermaid romance tale The Pisces by Melissa Broder for twenty minutes and 24 seconds.
And Amazon knows more than just what books I've read and when – information technology also knows which parts of them I liked the about. On 21 May 2019 I highlighted an excerpt from the third installment of the diary of Anaïs Nin, the data shows, and on 23 August 2018 at 11.25 pm, I highlighted an excerpt from Leslie Jamison's The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath. On 27 August 2018, I changed the color of a highlighted portion of that same book.
Other habits tracked included the times I copied excerpts from books into my iPhone's clipboard and how often I looked up definitions of words in Kindle's fastened dictionary.
I already understood Amazon tracks our purchases on its site, our action across the spider web, our vocalization commands, our grocery shopping and our locations. But the extensive tracking of my reading habits – my most beloved and previously offline hobby – was jarring. Who is this information shared with, what is done with it, and how can it affect my privacy – and the hereafter of the reading experience itself?
Amazon says it does not share what individual customers accept highlighted with publishers or anyone else, a spokeswoman said. The highlights are logged to sync reading progress and actions beyond devices, she said. Aggregated information is used to show which parts of books have well-nigh oft been highlighted, as Kindle customers can meet while reading. Information technology does say the data is used "to provide customers with products and services, pay content providers and improve the reading and shopping experience", the spokeswoman said.
From my reading history, which included books on self-help and mental health, Amazon could easily make inferences virtually my personal health, career and hobbies. Even the time of day I read or the speed at which I plow pages can provide insights on personal traits, said Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Cocky-Reliance.
"It is hard for us to wrap our minds around what bogus intelligence enables Amazon to exercise with this data," she said. "The kinds of nuanced correlations Amazon is able to find through analyzing that data is beyond what we can conceptualize as human beings."
Though Amazon says it is non currently sharing the insights gleaned from reading habits with anyone else, that the company holds on to the information shows information technology could be used in the future, said Alastair Mactaggart, an abet who co-wrote the ballot measure behind the California Consumer Privacy Act.
"Many of these companies just scoop up as much information as they can without knowing how it will be used – all they know is that more than information is meliorate," he said. "The essential truth is that these entities know us meliorate than we know ourselves."
Activists and hackers claim this information is not, in fact, necessary for the apps to function. "At that place is no reason Amazon or any other visitor needs to collect that kind of information to provide y'all with the service, which is simply reading a volume," said Evan Greer, the director at privacy activist group Fight for the Future.
To limit the corporeality of data Amazon tin collect on them, a number of readers are bypassing Amazon'south canonical file formats and downloading pirated books to Kindle. The so-called Kindle hackers have found ways to modify book covers, modify brightness and prevent tracking inside ebooks.
While more tech-savvy users can attempt to alter the Kindle device or app to prevent tracking, the average reader can do little to escape Amazon's reach. The company is at present responsible for the sale of some l% of concrete books for major publishers and 80% of ebooks. For those who prefer to buy books from brick-and-mortar stores, tracking reading on book social site Goodreads, which is owned past Amazon, will put you dorsum into the tech giant'southward purview.
"Ideally if we thought data drove practices were unfair, nosotros could go somewhere else," Greer said. "But that there is little selection speaks back to the fact that decisions Amazon makes have such an enormous effect across sectors because of its size and the monopoly that information technology exercises."
Could Amazon's monopoly over the publishing manufacture change the nature of books themselves? Equally a issue of the economic pressures of the streaming manufacture, the length of the average song on the Billboard Hot 100 fell from 3 minutes and 50 seconds to iii minutes and 30 seconds between 2013 and 2018. Will books exist the next art class to be altered? Greer said it is possible.
"Never underestimate the ability, or willingness, of tech companies to do almost anything to make a picayune extra money – including shifting the entire fashion we brand music or read and write books," she said. "They are perfectly willing for art to be collateral damage in their pursuit of profit."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/amazon-kindle-data-reading-tracking-privacy
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