<story><title>Amazon appears to be tracking every tap on Kindle</title><url>https://twitter.com/adrjeffries/status/1222277544730337280</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rtkwe</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a less invasive way to do that though by storing the latest location for each device. You don&amp;#x27;t need to store each and every page turn for the page sync feature.</text></item><item><author>Kuiper</author><text>One of the selling points for Kindle is that if you switch devices partway through (e.g. switch from reading on your tablet to reading on your phone, or switch from reading the ebook to listening to the audiobook in your car), it remembers what page you&amp;#x27;re on, so you can resume exactly where you left off.&lt;p&gt;Amazon actively touts this &amp;quot;Whispersync&amp;quot; feature in their marketing.  (From the Kindle product page: &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;With Whispersync, switch from Kindle to the Kindle app without losing your place (requires Wi-Fi).&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;) One would presume that Amazon achieves this by tracking whenever readers tap the screen to advance to the next page.  (And having a timestamp for that tap matters for resolving merge conflicts.)&lt;p&gt;Also worth noting that in the case of Kindle Unlimited (Amazon&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Netflix for ebooks&amp;quot; program), authors get paid per page read.  (If a person reads the first 5 pages of your book and drops it, the author gets paid less than if they read the whole thing.)  One of the things that Amazon has to deal with is fraud prevention, to detect when authors are finding ways to game metrics: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;notorious-kindle-unlimited-abuser-has-been-booted-from-the-bookstore&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;notorious-kindle-unlimited...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Kuiper</author><text>This is apparently how older Kindle models worked, which has made them an attack vector for fraud on Kindle Unlimited:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;KDP [Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon&amp;#x27;s self-publishing platform] pays authors for both paid downloads as well as for pages read and it doesn’t sense reading speed, just the highest number of pages reached.&lt;/i&gt; ...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;The way that the book-stuffing con works is that scammers stuff lots of extra content into an ebook before uploading it to Kindle Unlimited, and then trick readers into jumping to the end of the book.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Thanks to a flaw in the Kindle platform, namely that the platform knows your location in a book but not how many pages you have actually read, the scammers can get paid for a user having “read” a book in Kindle Unlimited by getting the user to jump to the last page.&lt;/i&gt; ...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Interestingly, the flip-to-end scam doesn’t quite work on newer Kindles but still works on older, non-updated Kindles which makes it still a lucrative scam.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;notorious-kindle-unlimited-abuser-has-been-booted-from-the-bookstore&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;notorious-kindle-unlimited...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon appears to be tracking every tap on Kindle</title><url>https://twitter.com/adrjeffries/status/1222277544730337280</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rtkwe</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a less invasive way to do that though by storing the latest location for each device. You don&amp;#x27;t need to store each and every page turn for the page sync feature.</text></item><item><author>Kuiper</author><text>One of the selling points for Kindle is that if you switch devices partway through (e.g. switch from reading on your tablet to reading on your phone, or switch from reading the ebook to listening to the audiobook in your car), it remembers what page you&amp;#x27;re on, so you can resume exactly where you left off.&lt;p&gt;Amazon actively touts this &amp;quot;Whispersync&amp;quot; feature in their marketing.  (From the Kindle product page: &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;With Whispersync, switch from Kindle to the Kindle app without losing your place (requires Wi-Fi).&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;) One would presume that Amazon achieves this by tracking whenever readers tap the screen to advance to the next page.  (And having a timestamp for that tap matters for resolving merge conflicts.)&lt;p&gt;Also worth noting that in the case of Kindle Unlimited (Amazon&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Netflix for ebooks&amp;quot; program), authors get paid per page read.  (If a person reads the first 5 pages of your book and drops it, the author gets paid less than if they read the whole thing.)  One of the things that Amazon has to deal with is fraud prevention, to detect when authors are finding ways to game metrics: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;notorious-kindle-unlimited-abuser-has-been-booted-from-the-bookstore&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;notorious-kindle-unlimited...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tqi</author><text>How is &amp;quot;tapped on page 11&amp;quot; different from &amp;quot;is on page 12&amp;quot;?</text></comment>