Amazon Kindle store flooded with e-book spam

Amazon's Kindle store is the latest online service to gain the attention of spammers after it was flooded with thousands of cheap books filled with pointless information, according to a report on Reuters.

The books are sold for next to nothing - usually around $0.99 (79p) - but clog up the store and mean that customers have to wade through pages of spam books to find legitimate novels and non-fiction titles, and may even download a fake book in the process.

Part of the problem is that anyone can publish to the Kindle store through self-publishing channels, which makes it easy for genuine authors to add their works but can overwhelm the store with unknown items, legitimate or otherwise.

V3.co.uk contacted Amazon for information on the scale of the problem and how it could be resolved, but had received no reply at the time of publication.

A spokesperson for Amazon told V3.co.uk the online retailer is working on the issue to ensure that customers do not suffer when using the Kindle service.

"Undifferentiated or barely differentiated versions of the same book don't improve the customer experience. We have processes to detect and remove undifferentiated versions of books with the goal of eliminating such content from our store," they said.

Nevertheless, the problem highlights some naivety on Amazon's part, as any new platform that involves financial transactions is always going to appeal to unscrupulous characters.

Furthermore, the e-book format is growing rapidly. A recent KPMG report found that UK citizens spend almost the same amount on book downloads as music files, as devices like the Kindle, Sony eReader and smartphones drive access to digital books.

It would seem that this spam flood will take advantage of the millions of people joining the e-book bandwagon who will be unaware of the threats and susceptible to fraud.

17 Jun 2011