Codebreaker

Amazon’s Kindle Fire faces more questions about privacy

Steve Henn Dec 1, 2011
When Amazon built the new Kindle Fire, it created a web browser specifically for the tablet. That browser, called Silk, lives not only on the Kindle Fire itself, but also on Amazon’s huge servers in the cloud.  Using remote servers to capture and load web pages makes browsing the web on the Kindle Fire much faster, but it also could give Amazon lots of data about what exactly you are doing online.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wants to know more about how Amazon will use all the information it can now collect.  Markey has been asking the Seattle company for more details about how its browser works since shortly after the Amazon Fire was unveiled. Unfortunately for Amazon, the Congressman still is not satisfied with the answers he’s getting.

“Amazon is collecting a massive amount of information about Kindle Fire users, and it has a responsibility to be transparent with its customers.”

“Amazon’s responses to my inquiries do not provide enough detail about how the company intends to use customer information, beyond acknowledging that the company uses this valuable information,” Markey said in a statement. “Amazon states ‘Customer information is an important part of our business,’ but it is also important for customers to know how the company uses their personal information.”

Hearings anyone?

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