
Your Kindle got stolen? Don't count on Amazon's help - nathell
http://vaultausir.blogspot.com/2013/02/your-kindle-got-stolen-dont-count-on.html
======
danso
I'm sorry....but the OP is being naive and is wrong to slam Amazon here. The
protocol Amazon has established here is sound...are they supposed to deliver
details of a device just because someone who was once registered to it demands
so? In 99% of the cases, sure, no harm can come from it...but it's better for
Amazon to adopt a clear line on this, so that their customer reps don't f--k
up on the 1 percent of requests that are actually malicious social engineering
attempts

* I'm not without sympathy...I was once liberated of much more expensive devices at gunpoint...and it is frustrating that the tracking capability is limited, even with a police order.

~~~
Lagged2Death
_The protocol Amazon has established here is sound..._

The story I read could be summarized as: "Amazon has no protocol for stolen
Kindles and flies by the seat of their pants instead, even if that means
telling paying customers things that are not true."

~~~
diminoten
I'm sorry, but paying customers of what, exactly? Amazon's Kindle device?
Amazon's Kindle store?

Which of these products comes with a service which helps you find your stolen
goods? Amazon offers this as a convenience feature, not as part of your
purchase price of the Kindle. A purchaser of a Kindle is not entitled to this
service.

~~~
Lagged2Death
_I'm sorry, but paying customers of what, exactly? Amazon's Kindle device?
Amazon's Kindle store?_

Both, presumably.

 _Which of these products comes with a service which helps you find your
stolen goods?_

Let's suppose that neither does. What does this have to do with "telling your
paying customers things that are not true?"

~~~
diminoten
Okay yeah that was not kosher, but I was more addressing his sense of
entitlement that, how DARE they not give him everything he wants and more?!

When you buy an item that is capable of being tracked (iPhone, car) you
generally pay for a service to locate it (iCloud, onStar). Otherwise you have
to get law enforcement actively involved, not just you, which raises the bar a
bit for those who qualify.

Imagine the Amazon nightmare: "Hey Amazon? Yeah I misplaced my Kindle, is it
at my house or Grandma's?"

------
edu
I think it's good that Amazon is not disclosing any information about anybody
without a court order. I'd be worried if they were disclosing their customers
information to any police agent without a warrant!

~~~
axelfreeman
It would be less frustrating if they said this in the first answer and don't
let the customer run tho the police (twice).

~~~
ishansharma
Exactly. Making him and police send the mail and then refusing after telling
that they would disclose is terrible on their side!

------
brudgers
The author's story is unfortunate. But this is not the tip of the iceberg. It
is not a tragedy, either.

A kindle costs about $100. The FBI won't get involved - even if you live in
the United States. A person is lucky if local law enforcement cares. The
expectation that a corporation should devote significant resources to
international law enforcement over each petty theft is absurd.

~~~
ishansharma
Lets leave the price for a minute, saying that this is not a tragedy is a bit
insensitive.

Even if it is $100 only, it is $100 only and saying that Amazon or anyone
should not get involved for such a small amount is not at all fair.

~~~
gamblor956
_saying that this is not a tragedy is a bit insensitive._

Compared to being robbed, raped, beaten, abused, starved, or murdered, I think
that losing a luxury device to a non-violent theft is most definitely _not a
tragedy_.

------
speeder
This is not exactly a surprise to me, and I don't believe is purely Amazon
fault, we have today in the world some very abrasive legal systems where
liability is really dangerous.

It is like the thief here in Brazil that broke his leg after his victim roof
gave away, sued the owner of the house, and won.

~~~
AskHugo
>the thief here in Brazil that broke his leg after his victim roof gave away,
sued the owner of the house, and won.

Source?

~~~
joseflavio
I am brasilian too, I could find this one [beware of strong images]:

[http://www.cidadeverde.com/asssaltante-morre-eletrocutado-
do...](http://www.cidadeverde.com/asssaltante-morre-eletrocutado-dono-de-
trailler-e-indiciado-por-homicidio-54052)

The thief tried to break into the a trailer but it had electric fences. The
thief died electrocuted and the owner of the trailer is being accused of
murder (facing charges and trial).

I remember reading several others like this one, so this is real in Brasil.

~~~
analog
Yup, as other poster noted this would result in charges against the owner in
the UK too.

You can't use deadly force against someone for theft in most civilised
countries.

~~~
thisone
You generally can't use deadly force against someone who is not threatening
your life.

------
DanBC
This is frustrating, but asking for correctly formed court documents is normal
and good.

In theory insurance should cover that. Or the thief, if they're ever caught.

------
chmars
If your Kindle gets stolen, it's still your Kindle and Amazon should therefore
disclose any information they have stored on your Kindle.

The underlying problem seems to be that a Kindle can be registered by new
users without consent from the current/last user. That is very irritating …

~~~
uxp
> it's still your Kindle and Amazon should therefore disclose any information
> they have stored on your Kindle.

What's to stop me from mentioning to a group of friends that I hardly use my
Kindle anymore, and one of them offering me $50 for it? Is it still my kindle?
Do I have to specifically de-register it before the exchange takes place?

What if I beat my wife nightly and she takes off one day into hiding, taking
our Kindle with her? Am I legally allowed to recover any location or usage
information (assuming it contains that, like a Fire) to teach her a lesson
that leaving me is a bad choice?

One should be forced to obtain a warrant to obtain any information about a
digital device (kindle/ipad/surface/galaxy) that is not the kind of
information readily given by the operator of the underlying service to end
users by default. It'll prevent a lot of shitty "edge cases" that
unfortunately aren't uncommon, including unwarranted digital spying by law
enforcement in the first place.

I agree on the second point though. When one encrypts a disk on OSX, it
requires a complete and painfully (to a lay-user) manual process to wipe that
disk to reuse unencrypted if the encryption key is no longer available. The
same process should be employed for re-registering any device without the
knowledge of the previous registrant's information.

~~~
Lagged2Death
_What's to stop me from mentioning to a group of friends that I hardly use my
Kindle anymore, and one of them offering me $50 for it? ... Do I have to
specifically de-register it before the exchange takes place?_

Yes?

Is this so different from selling someone a car, a cell phone, a video game
console, etc.?

 _What if I beat my wife nightly and she takes off one day into hiding, taking
our Kindle with her? Am I legally allowed to recover any location or usage
information (assuming it contains that, like a Fire) to teach her a lesson
that leaving me is a bad choice?_

You are attempting to confuse a pretty simple issue of property rights by
throwing some over-the-top moral issues and potentially bad outcomes into the
mix, as if either the morals or the outcomes have a bearing on the property
rights situation or the law. You might as well say "What if I steal a Kindle
from Adolf Hitler? Should he be allowed to track me down?" The way things
"should" be doesn't have a lot to do with this.

In any case, if your abused wife took off with your LoJack or OnStar equipped
car, I would expect the theft recovery people would, you know, recover the
theft. They wouldn't ask you if you had stopped beating your wife first. They
wouldn't first tell you to get the cops involved, then tell you they actually
required a court order, then tell you that all data related to your car had
been lost.

For a relatively low-value item like a Kindle, perhaps it would have been a
fair compromise to tell the owner "Sorry, all we can do is ban the unit from
the Amazon network." But that's not what happened in this story.

~~~
andynewman
The bottom line is that it's not the customer service reps place to get
involved. Giving private user information out every time it is requested would
be reckless. For every stolen device, there's at least one that was lost,
given away, or sold.

A car that costs thousands of dollars is a little different. That's why cars
have titles. You don't officially transfer anything when you sell a phone or a
Kindle, other than a bit of cash and the device itself.

You're also confusing the situation by brining up LoJack or OnStar. A major
part of those services is providing location data. Similar to Find my iPhone.
If you want to argue why doesn't Amazon have a "Find my Kindle" feature, then
I wouldn't disagree. If you're arguing that Amazon should trust anyone who
asks for private user information with a compelling story, well...

~~~
Lagged2Death
_A car that costs thousands of dollars is a little different. That's why cars
have titles. You don't officially transfer anything when you sell a phone or a
Kindle, other than a bit of cash and the device itself._

You would hand your American-style locked-to-a-carrier cell phone, that you're
paying a monthly service contract on, to another person for a sum of cash?
Without wiping your address book, without de-registering the device from the
provider account, etc.? Really? And you'd keep paying the contract for the
cell phone you don't have anymore?

I can see why you'd imagine that cars are different because of their high
value. That's not what I was getting at, though.

I chose cars as an example because of the _registration_. Even the lowest
value cars are tied to an elaborate network of rules - tax laws, operation and
licensing laws, environmental laws, financing and insurance contracts, and
property rights. A cell phone is a lot like that; without those ties to the
network, the cell phone is worthless. A Kindle is a lot like that too.

I'm not arguing that Amazon should necessarily get involved or that they
should necessarily have a "find my Kindle" feature. But if law enforcement
requests information _that Amazon has already promised to hand over to law
enforcement_ I can't see any excuse for not making good on that promise.

Even if you think requiring a warrant is the best policy, the story here is
that Amazon now claims the information is lost, permanently beyond the reach
of a warrant or anything else.

I don't think Amazon needs amateur defenders and in this case I don't think
they even deserve them. Do you think that if the FBI knocks on Amazon's door
and demands account information for all customers who read certain books (on
doing chemistry at home, on radical fundamentalist religions, etc.) that they
will chase the FBI away, or is it more likely they'll cave instantly, without
even asking about a warrant? I find it far-fetched that Amazon is refusing to
help with petty thefts as a way of looking out for our privacy. They're just
doing what most businesses do: the easy thing.

~~~
andynewman
I'm afraid I don't understand your point. I never said anything about wiping
data or canceling a contract because that's totally and completely irrelevant.
The point is a car title shows proof of ownership. Beyond paying a bill, you
don't have that proof of ownership for a cell phone. But even last month's
Verizon bill isn't proof to Verizon or Apple that I didn't just sell my iPhone
today. You certainly don't have anywhere near that proof of ownership with a
Kindle.

Amazon isn't doing the easy thing. Amazon is doing the thing that isn't going
to make them liable. If they don't hand over personal information, it's going
to piss off an internet commenter. If they hand over information (not required
by law), they are opening themselves up to liabilities as a result of
releasing private information.

If law enforcement follows the proper channels, it's a non-issue. If we're
arguing that an Amazon rep provided the wrong information to the customer,
well, then there's nothing to argue about.

I find it mildly humorous that we jump from an individual claiming their
Kindle was stolen to the FBI requesting information from Amazon. I'm not
arguing what Amazon should or shouldn't do. I'm simply sharing my perspective
on why they don't do it for everyone that comes asking.

~~~
Lagged2Death
_I'm afraid I don't understand your point. I never said anything about wiping
data or canceling a contract..._

You said:

 _You don't officially transfer anything when you sell a phone or a Kindle..._

But that's not really true. That's my point. You would follow some procedures,
involving the phone company officials (not government officials) to avoid
paying the buyer's phone bills or Kindle bills. In this way, the phone and the
Kindle are like a car. The transfer of ownership requires official help
because the Kindle, the phone, and the car are in a sense just nodes on a
network. Other goods, from pencils to diamond rings, are fundamentally
different, and don't require the involvement of officialdom when they change
hands.

You believe that you can cleave the car example off as a special category of
property, different because it's encumbered by government papers. My point is
that a lot of electronic gadgetry is already encumbered in the same way. The
papers don't have to be government ones.

I don't see the problem as one of proof of ownership. Information that could
have helped an investigation supposedly existed, was offered, then the offer
was rescinded, then the information was "lost." If a police department had
behaved this way, the readers of HN would call it corruption.

------
kosmogo
I would have hoped when i got my kindle stolen to have a way to declare it
stolen at amazon and block it maybe ? after all it's paid with my account and
my credit card, it's quite easy to find out.

~~~
delinka
And when you sell the device but then later attempt to extort the new owner by
reporting it stolen?

~~~
illuminate
How is that "extortion"?

~~~
delinka
"That's a nice e-reader you have there ... it'd be a shame if someone reported
it stolen and it stopped working. Maybe you should send me another fifty
bucks."

~~~
illuminate
Ah, well, ownership should be reliably transferable. This crap happens with
cellphones (I had it happen to me with an eBayed Galaxy S3 last week...)

------
solarflair
If thieves take your car for a joyride, do you email Ford to complain?

~~~
JanezStupar
You would if Ford had information about the current status of your car.

E.g. - If your car was a Tesla, then I guess that turning to Tesla would be
just the thing to do.

When your cell phone get stolen, your mobile provider(s) are the right people
to turn to.

Or what exactly would you do?

~~~
EwanToo
If it was a $50,000 car, I'd expect the police to put in a fair bit more
effort to recovering it than a $50 kindle.

When your cell phone gets stolen, the police are the right people to turn to,
not your network provider.

~~~
DanBC
In the UK there was a problem of people reporting their phones stolen so they
could break the contract.

One police station I walked into had a sign saying that they investigate all
reported phone theft, and would vigorously prosecute anyone making a false
report.

In general you report the phone to your service provider (so they can block
the IMEI (and there's a potential 5 year prison sentence for people who change
that) and then the police to get a crime reference number and then whoever has
insured the phone (sometimes the provider) to give them the reference number.

Perhaps this is a niche for a specialist to enter. Create some tool that gives
law enforcement and phone providers easy to use data-mining to allow them to
track stolen phones and catch thieves. (I haven't described it well, but this
would be something with tight integration between law enforcement and
providers; it'd have some kind of auditing to ensure correct legal
documentation; it would allow data on many phones to be displayed so you could
heat map where phones are stolen from or where stolen phones are ending up,
etc.)

~~~
thisone
how were people "legally" breaking contract doing this? It would seem more
like an insurance scam.

Unless mobile contracts have since changed, of course.

~~~
DanBC
It isn't legal. They weren't interested in the insurance, they just wanted to
use that phone on a different provider or to get a new phone.

~~~
thisone
I just don't understand how reporting the phone as stolen would allow them to
break the contract without having to pay the fee, or allow them to get a new
phone without paying full price ( without going through the insurance).

I know little about IMEI resetting (which is a good thing I guess), but I
thought it was a separate thing from phone unlocking?

------
rdl
Amazon should have a way to mark Kindles as stolen, just as a purely
commercial decision -- it makes people more willing to buy Kindles, and thus
Amazon will make more money on books. Really, anyone selling expensive
portable property which connects to a central registry as part of normal
operation should want to do so, without being pushed by the government. It
does reduce some replacement purchases, and might cut back on the secondhand
market, but it's going to make people more willing to carry/use their devices,
so it's probably a net win. I'd also be WAY more likely to buy used devices if
there were a simple check for "has not yet been reported stolen" and then wait
some days to finalize a purchase and "still has not been reported stolen",
than I am now (where you can safely assume that almost any recent model device
being sold used is stolen)

(I suspect I buy enough Kindle books that if I reported one of my Kindles as
stolen or unrecoverable-and-damaged, I'd get a free replacement, but I've
probably got >$5k in Kindle books since I stopped buying paper books when the
first Kindle came out. The irony is I pretty much use my iPad with kindle app
as reader, now, because I really like backlighting and reading in a dark
room.)

~~~
dfc
So you think amazon would send you a free kindle if you reported the kindle
that you are not using was stolen?

~~~
rdl
Probably, because I use the _account_ a lot. Just not the devices (I probably
have...12?) I use the DXes a fair bit, and use kindles when I'm outdoors, but
I prefer to remain indoors generally.

------
Tyrannosaurs
The issue is surely that the police are asking for data without the owners
permission (and which isn't the original owner's data - the device yes, the
data now on it, no).

Are we saying that a third party should hand over data to the police without
the owner of that data giving permission based solely on an allegation?
Personally I'm not wild about that idea, it feels like something that could be
very easily abused.

We're very quick to demand full legal due process when someone wants access to
private data held by a third party and we don't feel it should be surrendered
it, but a consequence of that is that it pretty much becomes necessary to
follow legal process in all instances because very few of them (including this
one) are completely clear.

------
bobsy
People are talking about getting a warrant. Would police go to so much bother
for such a low value device?

Especially considering how the new owner of the device probably brought it off
the thief at a market or something. It is unlikely the thief is actually using
the device.

------
yareally
Before modern day phones where you had direct control of GPS (circa 2004ish),
I had my phone stolen and filed a police report. I called my phone company at
the time (Sprint) and they would not lift a finger to use the built in GPS to
find where it was despite the police standing in front of me at the time after
I had filed the report. The police were willing to do something, but Sprint
said they couldn't.

Such things always made me question why they bothered mandating having GPS in
"dumb phones" in the first place. Obviously there's other reasons, but none
that seem to help consumers.

~~~
ben1040
>Such things always made me question why they bothered mandating having GPS in
"dumb phones" in the first place. Obviously there's other reasons, but none
that seem to help consumers.

The main purpose of GPS in dumbphones (and one which clearly is intended to
help consumers) was to fulfill the enhanced 911 mandate so your geographic
location can be transmitted to dispatchers when you dial 911.

------
scorcher
I'm not sure Amazon can give away your personal information without a court
order. I think it breaks their terms and conditions and could get them in
legal trouble. Unfortunate but really not Amazon's fault.

~~~
DannyBee
It depends on the country.

------
ankitml
I have exactly same story. Had spent a week struggling with Indian Police, and
amazon did not help at all.

Twice this has happened and I have not bought a third kindle although I
desperately want it.

~~~
jasonlotito
You sent in a court order and Amazon failed to comply?

~~~
ankitml
no, i sent them a scanned copy of the police document, in which i registered
my kindle as lost device.

~~~
jasonlotito
That's meaningless. I wish I could be more sympathetic, but the reality is,
you're expecting them to open up loopholes in their system that could be
easily exploited.

~~~
ankitml
how? I am just asking them to track kindle which is registered with me. how is
this a loophole?

------
dante_dev
maybe the thief is buying more books than you...[just kidding] xD

~~~
thirdtruck
Almost happened to Wil Wheaton and his stolen Kindle:

[http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/20411186024/to-the-
person-...](http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/20411186024/to-the-person-who-
found-my-kindle)

------
mtgx
Why would you count on Amazon's help?!

------
analog
And there's no real reason why you should count on Amazon's help. There are
all sorts of risks providing this information, what if the request comes from
a corrupt policeman working for a private detective (it happens). Requiring a
warrant creates a paper trail.

In the real world, if your stuff gets stolen, you're responsible, not the
company you bought the product from.

~~~
ledneb
"You're responsible" is a terrible thing to say. In "the real world"? So
assuming you mean with non-digital/electronic goods? If someone steals my bag
they don't go and register it with some central bag authority, so of course I
don't go calling my bag's manufacturer. Of course I'm responsible. Unless it's
on CCTV. I expect /those/ guys to be sane, to help me and to show the CCTV to
the police. They have clear evidence of a crime sitting right in front of them
- if I flag it up to them, it should be damn near their /duty/ to give that
evidence to the police.

Surely Amazon have pretty clear evidence in front of them. Someone's reported
their kindle stolen, they see the kindle registered in someone else's name
shortly after that report, the police have contacted them. Amazon can surely
create their own paper trail - verifying the identity of the police first.

Besides, the other post implies that they're saying there's no hard link
between the kindle and the account. That's probably front-line support failing
to get a message higher than their lazy supervisor.

Anyway, I disagree with the sentiments here and in other replies. There are
privacy warriors - quite rightly so - but there's also blatant common sense.
Amazon should be applying that here. Putting on a tin-foil hat and saying "but
what if..." isn't always a sensible thing to do.

If you commit a crime and submit evidence of it to my web service, you can be
damn sure I'm passing your details to the police, so long as it's legal for me
to do so.

~~~
brudgers
_"Surely Amazon have pretty clear evidence in front of them. Someone's
reported their kindle stolen, they see the kindle registered in someone else's
name shortly after that report, the police have contacted them. Amazon can
surely create their own paper trail - verifying the identity of the police
first."_

The contents of a police report are allegations not facts. The evidence is
ambiguous. Persons sell items and then report them stolen. It is quite
reasonable for Amazon to refuse to adjudicate disputed ownership of $100 worth
of hardware.

Amazon's responsibilities differ with respect to the digital goods in their
care. Those are tied to an individual in a way that a physical device is not.

~~~
DannyBee
The police are the official investigative arm. It's their job to be doing
this. The position that amazon should not cooperate with the police because
_the police may be wrong_ is ridiculous. They are not adjudicating anything,
they are being asked by a law enforcement officer to provide information they
said they would provide to law enforcement.

