How does Amazon keep track of the pages I view?

May 15, 2006 11:41 AM

Exactly how does Amazon know the number of pages I view?

Amazon has started cracking down on how much you can actually Search Inside The Book (TM) (now called Search Inside!). After browsing about a dozen or so pages of Infinite Jest today, I got this message:
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Important Message
Amazon.com is pleased to offer our customers the ability to view copyrighted material from books participating in the Search Inside! program. To protect this copyrighted material, the books are subject to publisher-approved page-viewing limits.

You have reached a page-viewing limit. For security purposes, we are not able to provide further information about the specific limit reached.

We encourage you to use the other Search Inside! features that are available to you regardless of your limit status. These features include the ability to search inside any book in the program and view text-only excerpts from that book. You can also browse sample pages for any book in the program by clicking the links in the "Browse sample pages" box found on that book's product detail page.
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I thought they were using a bean-counting cookie linked to my login, but I deleted all my cookies and it's still keeping track of my IP or something (I know very little about these things). Unlike Google Books, which blocks specific pages of a book to all users, Amazon is making a connection between the user (me) and the number of pages I view. How?

posted by mattbucher to computers & internet (6 comments total)

You have to be signed into your account to use the feature -- if you're not logged in, no search inside. So they're associating page views with your account.

And it's not new -- I've run up against that "important message" in the past.
posted by blueshammer at 11:50 AM on May 15, 2006

Amazon has started cracking down on how much you can actually Search Inside The Book

Not really, they limited the number of pages you could browse since day one.

Amazon records a lot of data about you in order to power their recomendations system.
posted by b1tr0t at 11:50 AM on May 15, 2006

So I would have to register as a new user to keep viewing pages? Will this feature ever be turned back on for me or have I permanently maxed out this feature for this login? Any experience with this?

I have had the same username and password at Amazon for a long time and this is the first time I've come across this message. I browse SITB pages all the time and I had no reason to think it was anything but a new feature since I had viewed a lot of pages today.
posted by mattbucher at 12:15 PM on May 15, 2006

I believe it resets each day.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:25 PM on May 15, 2006

Thanks, jacquilynne.

Apologies for the dull question.
posted by mattbucher at 12:35 PM on May 15, 2006

Some books have internal limits that aren't ever reset. Once you've hit that books max, ou can't access that book with that account again.
posted by blueshammer at 1:06 PM on May 15, 2006