Monday, September 8, 2014

Kindle Tip: Found a Kindle? How to find the owner

If you find a Kindle, Amazon will not/ cannot give out owner information. It causes a fair bit of complaint when the person who has lost their kindle finds out that Amazon won't help the finder but for privacy reasons, they simply won't.

So if you find a Kindle and call Amazon, their advice tends to be turn in to lost & found, give it to the police, or send to kindle recycling.

My advice is to first do a little detective work. There are various places you might be able to locate the details of owner.
  • Remove the case or cover. I have seen many kindles with a sticker on the back, giving the phone number/ address of the owner
  • Turn it on. Sometimes people put their name and phone number in the "device name" to appear at the top of the homepage. {learn how to do that with this old tip}
  • Check the menu settings, device information.  Several kindles have a section for personal info where people record name, number, email address etc. It is a little buried in the menus (why?!) but it is there.
  • Check the registration info. Many kindles state email address of the account holder in the Registration section within the menu settings. Kindles are registered to an amazon account by email address and this is listed in the Registration section.
    Note: Don't use the "Kindle's email address" that ends with @kindle.com - that won't work, you need the person's actual email address.

7 comments :

  1. I found a Kindle. The owner name was under Settings (gear icon). It was two levels down (click gear icon to access each level). The owner's name was there under MyAccount. With the name I did a white page search, got a phone number, and contacted the owner. Hurray!

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  2. That's great! I bet the owner was very grateful!

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  3. My son registered his information at Amazon linked to the found Kindle device. If the owner calls Amazon they'll give the owner my son's information so he can send it back.

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    Replies
    1. It's great that they have this option now. Back when this was written (2014)m that wasn't available and Amazon wouldn't share the info.

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  4. Today I found a Amazon kindle while out recycling, it comes on but the language is in Chinese with someone named Tony...what should I do?

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    Replies
    1. You can change the language, but the method varies on each type of Kindle.
      I would first call Amazon at 1 (888) 280-4331 and explain to them. The Kindle should have a serial number on the back & they might be able to track it from that.

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  5. January 17, 2022
    I found Mark's suggestion (from December 2017) to be helpful. The owner's name was exactly where Mark said he found it.

    "I found a Kindle. The owner name was under Settings (gear icon). It was two levels down (click gear icon to access each level). The owner's name was there under MyAccount."

    Thank you!

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