Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 338 posts

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#151

Post by teknopaul »

philwelch wrote: post #139
remarkEon wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought my mom an Echo for Christmas last year for the kitchen, since she likes making lists and setting timers for baking and her hands are starting to show their age (she’s 63, ‘bout that time I guess). Really grating that what was at one time a helpful device for older folks is now retroactively being turned into yet another internet surveillance device.

With all due respect, it’s a microphone connected to the internet that you are meant to install in your home. How are you surprised to see it used as a surveillance device?

no no no, you should not expect people to behave badly.

I agree with the sentiment that it is a crying shame this technology could be used to help people for whom keyboards become complicated but instead it's used to trick them.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#152

Post by teknopaul »

wearywanderer wrote: post #107
philsnow wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what problem does Amazon thinks this solves? Bad connectivity experiences for Ring users? I wrote my guess elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358758 tl;dr Amazon will resell access to Sidewalk to device manufacturers, allowing them to cost-effectively bridge the "telemetry gap".

No bones about it, this is Amazon's response to > If you don't want your smart tv to spy on you, then don't give it your wifi password.

How's does it stand legally stealing people's Internet connection and selling it to people who don't have the password.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#153

Post by ThatPlayer »

tkinom wrote: post #93
adamredwoods wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon notes this in their FAQ: it's capped at 80kbps and max of 500MB per month. I don't know if this includes Bluetooth though.

Sounds like a fun project for the future Black Hack conf: Implement tor / torrent on top of Amazon mash network and break all the bandwidth limits.

It's probably not possible. The devices runs on LoRa wireless protocol, which measures bandwidth in single digit kilobits a second.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#154

Post by kstrauser »

azinman2 wrote: post #135
gertrunde wrote: post #114

Is this massively different from the way Apple tags are tracked by Apple devices that are not the tag owners devices?

It seems to be. It can use up to 500mb/month of data, and is more than just for tracking something with tiny payloads of anonymized data. But it doesn’t seem to be sharing your internet like a lot of people seem to claim. I guess the fear is that there’s some security vulnerability that makes that more possible?

From their FAQ: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...

> When Sidewalk is on, your Bridge can share a low-bandwidth connection with Sidewalk-enabled devices, like sensors and smart lights that are installed in locations around and outside your home where wifi may not be available. Amazon Sidewalk does not support high-bandwidth connections like a wifi or cellular network would, so you would still use those connections for streaming movies, posting on social media or sending email.

It does share your Internet connection. By default, an Alexa device in my house would be negotiating a connection sharing arrangement with my neighbor's. If/when a vulnerability is found in these devices, an attacker on my neighbor's network will have connectivity to a node on my network. Now imagine the case where a small business has a vulnerable Alexa on their network to play some music in the office. Anyone who could get a hacked Alexa within 900MHz range of that office would have access to that office, open file shares, etc.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#155

Post by eulers_secret »

philsnow wrote: post #75
philsnow wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is going to sell access to Sidewalk to e.g. TV manufacturers (and anybody else), making money off of your internet connection. Before Sidewalk, if a device manufacturer wanted to be able to get sensor/environmental/etc data back to the mothership, it had to either pair to a phone with bluetooth, use wifi (needs creds), or include a 2g modem with a SIM (pretty expensive). A customer who doesn't see a need for t…

My only options for escaping Sidewalk are living far enough away from neighbors or convincing all the neighbors within range of my house that they shouldn't have any Sidewalk bridge-able devices. I would at least be interested in a way of finding out what sidewalk bridges are accessible from my location. Anybody know of a way? Is it just wifi?

There's at least 2 other options: Disable (physically) modems/antennas of sidewalk-enabled devices you own, or do not purchase devices that are sidewalk-enabled.

Sidewalk uses LoRa and a 900Mhz other signal (for garage door openers). With an SDR that can use that spectrum, you could probably determine if there are sidewalk endpoints around. Might be able to foxhunt them to certain houses.

My plan is to do my best to avoid these devices (FCC IDs may be helpful here), and if I can't, then physically disable them from being able to communicate. Hopefully other folks do the same, and there will be information/a community online to help.

The rest of the world is up a creek, only the 'techno-elite' have the privilege of privacy and being tracking-free. It probably doesn't amount to much, though...

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#156

Post by foxhill »

could you imagine any orginisation just walking up to almost every home in the country and presuming they had the right to "a very small portion" of your property, unless you went through some steps to explicitly opt out?

imagine they paid for their own infra to do this. how much would that cost? in this light, is sidewalk not theft?

amazon, if you want to use my internet - for whichever distopic future plans you may have - you can pay me for it. it will not be cheap.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#158

Post by Taniwha »

stingrae wrote: post #150
philsnow wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what problem does Amazon thinks this solves? Bad connectivity experiences for Ring users? I wrote my guess elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358758 tl;dr Amazon will resell access to Sidewalk to device manufacturers, allowing them to cost-effectively bridge the "telemetry gap".

100% this. as a device maker, sidewalk is a potential game changer for low power connectivity and finally a path to lorawan finding wide spread adoption

except that, unlike ble, lora lives on bands that are not the same world wide - there is no region 3 ISM band - here in NZ the US ISM band is right in the middle of one of my cell phone company's bands

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#159

Post by [deleted] »

philsnow wrote: post #75
philsnow wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is going to sell access to Sidewalk to e.g. TV manufacturers (and anybody else), making money off of your internet connection. Before Sidewalk, if a device manufacturer wanted to be able to get sensor/environmental/etc data back to the mothership, it had to either pair to a phone with bluetooth, use wifi (needs creds), or include a 2g modem with a SIM (pretty expensive). A customer who doesn't see a need for t…

My only options for escaping Sidewalk are living far enough away from neighbors or convincing all the neighbors within range of my house that they shouldn't have any Sidewalk bridge-able devices. I would at least be interested in a way of finding out what sidewalk bridges are accessible from my location. Anybody know of a way? Is it just wifi?

[deleted]

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#160

Post by bobthechef »

Incidentally, how do people working at Amazon and other FAANGs justify their cooperation or even direct role in BigTech's onward march toward total control and saturation and its use of abusive and coercive practices? I'm sure many of them frequent HN. I'm sure many on HN would like to hear what they have to say.
Post reply on HN