Kindle: Amazon turns off older e-readers from accessing e-books

Probably for security reasons, several generations of devices will lose direct access to the group’s range from August

Anyone who owns an older e-reader from Amazon’s Kindle series will only be able to upload new e-books in a few months in a roundabout way. The company has sent emails to owners of such devices these days, announcing a corresponding changeover.

In August, the affected readers will no longer be able to access the online shop directly. Users then have to buy the e-books in other ways, download them and upload them manually. Books already obtained and saved from the store are retained.

Old encryption standard probably reason

The regular Kindle models up to the fifth generation, which came onto the market in 2012, are affected, as well as the Kindle DX and the Kindle Keyboard. Even if the support period was quite long, it is the first time that Amazon has separated its own e-readers from the offer.

The group failed to provide a reason for this step in the notification. With Good E-Reader, however, it is suspected that this is because the devices concerned do not support a current encryption standard. They still operate with TLS 1.0 and 1.1, so allowing them access means increased security effort.

The problem cannot be solved with a firmware update. The most recent version of TLS is 1.3, which was specified in 2018 and also brought an upgrade to its still widely used predecessor 1.2. Some time ago, older Kindles also lost full access to Wikipedia, which has since discontinued support for outdated TLS versions.