E-Readers are Tracking Devices

What E-Readers reveal about owners may surprise consumers. E-Readers pay company producers in many ways beyond the initial sales of its products. If you own, what to buy an E-Reader and or know someone who owns an E-Reader, read this article on a breakdown of how the device tracks owners and suggestions to not be tracked by any of these handheld devices should you choice to do so.

According to Mario Armstrong, a digital lifestyle expert, an E-Reader tablet can be a tracking device. Armstrong was recently interviewed on Today with Matt Lauer where he disclosed to viewers that ereaders have tracking capabilities of its owner.  He mentioned that there are currently over 40 million devices.  He also stated that another 60 million tablets are also in the hands of world citizens.

E-Reader devices are tablet like devices that hold electronic copies of books and documents.  It is handheld.  Publishers now can tell not only who is reading a book since books are uploaded to the device, uploading books to E-Readers also give valuable marketing information to companies of digital book purchases.  Examples of knowing what readers are doing with downloadable books viewed on E-Readers is what an owner highlights on the pages of the digital copy.  Annotations, pages turned, how long it takes to read a book and more.  What E-Readers reveal is what, when and how you read downloadable books.  This is free information that can help with marketing, advertising and future sales for a book publisher.  This means readers habits are being analyzed for the benefit of future publications produced by a publishing house.  The detail of E-Reader is that it can tell even if a consumer finishes a book or not.

All tracking is on by default on E-Readers.  The ability to turn off various tracking sections on E-Readers is challenging, but Mario Armstrong did mention he found on Kindle in the setting section, owners can at least turn off public notes or annotations so that a readers habits are not back-linked to the company.  California issued a Reader Privacy Act that went into effect on January of 2012.  It states that it is against liberties that companies find out about customers buying Ebooks without getting a court order.  Seems with every new device, new laws need to be made and searched out for citizens to protect themselves against corporate abuse of privacy.

© 2012 Sharon L. West