Your E-Reader Tracks A Lot Of Information About You

Privacy hawks take note: If you want to keep anything about your reading habits or subject matter confidential, you may want to limit your reading to dead tree material. A fascinating, if disconcerting article in the Wall Street Journal reveals that that fun new e-device that makes downloading and carrying around books such a breeze also makes tracking what you read and how you read it a breeze, too.

The Journal reports:

The major new players in e-book publishing—Amazon, Apple and Google—can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books.

...Amazon can identify which passages of digital books are popular with readers, and shares some of this data publicly on its website through features such as its "most highlighted passages" list. Readers digitally "highlight" selections using a button on the Kindle; they can also opt to see the lines commonly highlighted by other readers as they read a book. Amazon aggregates these selections to see what gets underlined the most. Topping the list is the line from the "Hunger Games" trilogy. It is followed by the opening sentence of "Pride and Prejudice."

Forewarned is forearmed!