Amazon is about to render some of its older Kindles useless

Amazon’s Kindle e-readers are pretty useful if you like having multiple books to choose from while you’re on the go. Plus, the fact that ebooks are a relatively low-intensive kind of file, it’s not like you have to spend money constantly upgrading your e-reader, or at least that’s what we thought.

According to a report from Good eReader, it seems that Amazon has started to send out emails to several Kindle owners, informing them that their Kindles will no longer be able to browse, buy, or borrow ebooks directly from their devices. This will affect the Kindle (2nd Gen) International, Kindle DX International, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle (4th Gen), and Kindle (5th Gen).

Those who own these devices can still purchase or borrow ebooks, but they will need to buy them from Amazon’s website, like from a computer, and then have those ebooks delivered to their devices. This means that owners of these older Kindle models will still be able to buy new ebooks, but the way they access the store and download these ebooks will involve a slightly longer method.

It is unclear what prompted these changes, but the publication speculates that it could be due to a TLS issue, where the older Kindles do not have the hardware needed to support newer versions of TLS. Amazon is also apparently offering users affected by this a 30% discount on a new Kindle, along with $40 in free ebook credit.

Source: Good eReader