Amazon removed books from my Kindle

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by haertig

And you can only say Kobo doesn't do that, until they do.

People used to think Amazon would never delete anything either ... until they did.

Security is a proactive concept, not a reactive one. Don't wait until something has already happened to you before you take steps to protect yourself from it, if it's a plausible potential future occurrence. And seeing other companies do it definitely makes it plausible that your company might do it too.

Before this issue, Amazon did remove 1984. So we know Amazon can and does remove content from Kindles.

Kobo won't be removing content as they take Canadian privacy laws seriously.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by aeluon

Unfortunately, this happened to me last night. Saturday we left out of state to spend time with the family over the holidays. I did not connect the Oasis to any wifi while out of state. I used my Kindle Oasis on Sunday night in the hotel without issue. We returned home yesterday morning and when I went to read at night discovered that:

1) All my sideloaded books using Calibre were removed
2) All my downloaded Amazon books were removed
3) All my book progress appears to be reset (Kindle books I have read now show up as unread)

Amazon support did not really care and did not have any solutions to offer. I will be moving to a different e-reader - this is wholly unacceptable.

Why did you turn on WiFi?

[haertig]

Originally Posted by aeluon

1) All my sideloaded books using Calibre were removed
2) All my downloaded Amazon books were removed
3) All my book progress appears to be reset (Kindle books I have read now show up as unread)

The grand scope of that sounds more like a major software glitch (or failing hardware) than an Amazon intentional delete.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

As I have multiple backups of my books and I don't highlight/take notes, I'm not really worried if Kobo will do it some day or not. I can easily reload my books..

That is part of what I meant when I said:

"Don't wait until something has already happened to you before you take steps to protect yourself from it"

[rupor]

I have two PW5 (one regular, one signature - not that it matters). Regular one has WiFi always on, signature is almost always off. Several times after I turned on WiFi to receive content from Amazon (every time I bought something) sync will delete all sideloaded books from the device. In all cases clock was somewhat out of sync on the device (DST, drift, etc). To me it looks like a software bug and not an intentional action, because second device (which has no purchased content - only sideloaded books and WiFi always on) never had any issues like that.

[jhowell]

I have a theory about what is going on here.

Normally Kindles are kept in sync with your Amazon account using a to-do list whenever the device connects to Amazon. That list contains the changes made since the last time the Kindle has interacted with Amazon. Things like book added, book deleted, last page read of a book updated, annotation added, etc.

My guess is that when a device fails to connect for as long period of time the to-do list is scrapped and a different procedure is used to synchronize the device once it finally connect to Amazon. In that case it seems to be going through the device book-by-book bringing the state of each book up to date.

However there is a potential problem with books sideloaded via calibre. When calibre converts a book to Kindle format it includes internal metadata that makes the book appear to be a purchase from Amazon (cdtetype=EBOK). That metadata enables extra functionality on the Kindle that is not available for personal documents.

I suspect that the cleanup process tries to synchronize these books with the reading position and annotations from the user's account only to find that the book is not actually owned by that user. Rather than just ignoring that and moving on to the next book it seems they have chosen to delete the book instead. Perhaps they justify doing that by considering the user to be making use of Kindle features to which they are not entitled by not actually purchasing the book from Amazon. Or perhaps it was just a bad choice made by a software developer.

A way to test this theory would be to sideload some books that do not include this metadata and see whether they are deleted after a long period in airplane mode.

[Sirtel]

At least one user reported that their personally created content (which can't have an Amazon ASIN, as it doesn't exist on Amazon) was also deleted. So it can't be the ASIN.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

At least one user reported that their personally created content (which can't have an Amazon ASIN, as it doesn't exist on Amazon) was also deleted. So it can't be the ASIN.

Again, if it was converted by calibre then by default it will be marked as having come from Amazon. If there is no ASIN then calibre generates a fake one.

It could just be a case of the book's metadata says it came from Amazon, the book is not associated with the user's account, so delete it to bring the device in sync with the account. Amazon could just be making the wrong assumption that the book was a returned purchase or an expired borrow without actually checking if that was the case.

[Sirtel]

Hmm. I wonder if you actually buy from Amazon, but remove the DRM (to fix poor formatting, for example) and sideload, will the book be deleted? After all, it does exist on the Kindle account in that case.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Hmm. I wonder if you actually buy from Amazon, but remove the DRM (to fix poor formatting, for example) and sideload, will the book be deleted? After all, it does exist on the Kindle account in that case.

Amazon keeps track of on which devices your purchases and borrows are supposed to be present.

I suspect that if you download a book to a device it will remain there even if you remove the DRM. If you download it to one device, remove DRM, and copy it to a different device then I believe it is likely to be deleted if the metadata remains intact.

[Sirtel]

What a PITA. Of course I keep my ereaders practically always offline and don't even use a Kindle at the moment, but still, this kind of thing is hugely discouraging to any plans to buy a Kindle again in the future. I sideload everything, so Amazon deleting my books because they think they know better what should be on my device is the height of arrogance and just plain stupidity (if it's intentional). Of all their stupid decisions in recent years this is the absolute new low. Way to go, Amazon.

[JSWolf]

for those who have had books removed from your Kindle, how long was it between the sync that lost the books and the previous sync?

[mergen3107]

What if you put files not just in /documents, but in /documents/Downloads/Items01 (or something like this it defaults to when downloading Amazon content)?

[rupor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

for those who have had books removed from your Kindle, how long was it between the sync that lost the books and the previous sync?

Hard to tell - months?

Originally Posted by jhowell

It could just be a case of the book's metadata says it came from Amazon, the book is not associated with the user's account, so delete it to bring the device in sync with the account. Amazon could just be making the wrong assumption that the book was a returned purchase or an expired borrow without actually checking if that was the case.

I think you are on to something here - all my sideloaded books are KF8, marked as EBOK and have fake ASIN.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why did you turn on WiFi?

Sorry, but why should this question be asked in response to his books being removed? If you want to turn on wi-fi, and cannot without this risk of happening, then the kindle would not be worth it to own as an e-reader in my opinion.

Some like to leave wi-fi off, but I like to turn mine on and download/update randomly.

Thankfully this issue really is rare whether you use wi-fi or not. It hasn't happened to me again since the last time about 2 years back.