What we found
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite: FAmazon knows every book you read, every highlight you make, and every page you stop on.
The Kindle companion app requests 60 permissions including ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION, ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION, READ_PHONE_STATE, COLLECT_METRICS, AD_ID, MANAGE_DEVICE_AND_USER_DATA, and WRITE_USE_APP_FEATURE_SURVEY. It embeds Amazon Advertisement and Amazon Analytics trackers. Amazon tracks every page turn, reading speed, highlights, notes, and search queries — making reading habits one of the most comprehensively surveilled activities on a consumer device.
Kindle Scribe: CAmazon tracked one user's Kindle activity across 90,000 recorded interactions — every tap, every page turn — and uses it to target ads.
Amazon Kindle Reading Insights records every page turn, tap, and session timestamp. One reporter received 90,000 rows of recorded interactions. Disabling Reading Insights hides the dashboard but does not stop data collection.
Libra 2: CMozilla privacy researchers gave Kobo a worse score than Amazon, finding that Kobo sells your reading activity data to third parties and most users outside C...
Mozilla Privacy Not Included gave Kobo eReaders a failing assessment. Mozilla found Kobo may sell online identifiers and activity to third parties. Deletion rights limited to California and EU residents only.
Kobo Libra 2: BKobo tracks every page turn, every highlight, every reading session.
Kobo tracks detailed reading analytics: which pages you read, how long you spend on each page, which passages you highlight, when you read, and where you stop. This data is sent to Rakuten's servers in Japan. Rakuten is one of the largest advertising technology companies in Asia. Your reading habits feed into the same company that operates Japan's largest e-commerce platform and advertising network.