As an Amazon subsidiary, Audible's privacy practices are governed by Amazon's massive data collection infrastructure. Every second of listening is tracked, analyzed, and fed into Amazon's consumer profiles. This data powers recommendations across Amazon's ecosystem, informs advertising, and creates detailed behavioral profiles based on your literary interests—data that reveals far more about you than typical shopping behavior.
| Data Type | Collected | Shared | Sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listening history and duration | Yes | Amazon Ecosystem | Ad Targeting |
| Playback position and speed | Yes | Internal | No |
| Bookmarks and clips | Yes | Service Providers | No |
| Content preferences and interests | Yes | Amazon/Advertisers | Ad Profiles |
| Device and location data | Yes | Amazon Ecosystem | Unclear |
| Voice commands (Alexa) | Yes | Amazon/Partners | Product Development |
Amazon tracks exactly what you listen to, for how long, at what speed, and when you stop. Abandoned audiobooks, late-night listening sessions, and repeated chapters all feed into your profile.
Your audiobook interests merge with Amazon shopping data, Prime Video watching, Alexa interactions, and Ring doorbell footage to create comprehensive consumer profiles used across all Amazon services.
Using Audible with Alexa means voice commands are recorded and analyzed. Your book requests, playback controls, and voice patterns are processed by Amazon's voice recognition systems.
Your audiobook preferences inform the ads you see across the web. Interest in self-help, health, politics, or religion becomes advertising targeting data.
Amazon retains data for extended periods. Your complete listening history may be stored indefinitely, creating permanent records of your intellectual interests.
Amazon provides some privacy controls to limit ad personalization and manage voice recordings, though opting out of tracking entirely isn't possible.
You can request a download of your Amazon/Audible data to see what's collected about you, though the volume can be overwhelming.