How to Find PID for Kindle & iPhone

By Isobel Phillips

Protect and distribute ebooks by restricting them to specific PIDs.
i David McNew/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Amazon.com protects the Kindle books you've purchased from being passed to other users by linking them to your registered devices by their Personal ID. The PID is created by applying an algorithm to the product's serial number. You can also digitally protect your own content and distribute it to authorized devices if you know the PID numbers of the Kindles or iPhones that you want to have access to your library.

Kindle

Step 1

Log in to your Amazon account, hover over "Kindle" in the navigation bar and select "Manage your Kindle."

Step 2

Click on "Manage your devices" in the section "Your Kindle account." Highlight the serial number of your Kindle and copy it to your clipboard.

Step 3

Visit the Kindle tool at Preston Lee (see the link in Resources) and paste your Kindle's serial number in the "Reader serial" box, deleting the spaces between the blocks of four characters. Optionally enter your email address and click "Calculate" to display the PID for your device.

IPhone

Step 1

Connect your iPhone to your computer with the iPhone's USB cable and start iTunes.

Step 2

Click on your iPhone name in the "Devices" section of the menu bar and choose "Summary."

Step 3

Click on the "Serial Number" link to display your iPhone's 40-digit identifier. Copy the identifier to your clipboard and paste it in to the Kindle tool at Preston Lee (see the link in Resources). Remove any spaces and click "Calculate" to generate the PID for your iPhone.

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