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

theguardian.com

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

#161

Post by twoWhlsGud »

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.

"the street finds its own uses for things" (Gibson) is rapidly becoming "the wall street finds its own uses for things"

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

#162

Post by UI_at_80x24 »

paulcole wrote: post #124
vincent-toups wrote: post #14

I'd rather go without internet than have one of these damned smart devices in my house. I can't believe how popular they are.

I might be the only one here who doesn't care at all about this. I love my Echo and Amazon IOT devices and have got better things to do than wring my hands over what they're doing with my internet connection. They use hardly any bandwidth so whatever, not going to turn this feature off.

The threat vector at this time isn't what Amazon does with access to your internet. It's what John Q. Public does.

'Free Internet' (on your dime), will always lead to abuse. Plus, how much do you trust Amazon's security to NEVER allow access to other resources on your network?

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

#163

Post by Scoundreller »

FredPret wrote: post #116
Scoundreller wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I find these ad hoc mobile mesh networks fascinating. With cheap flash, we could do a lot of high-latency high-bandwidth data transport with just existing movements. We could eliminate telecoms overnight but we just don’t have the organization to do it. Like, every house used to have a VHF/UHF receiving tower on it.

A content “delivery” network running on human movements. Now that’d be an interesting routing problem.

Not just human movements, but any movements. In Northern Canada, we have tons of fly-in communities that exclusively use satellite internet.

And few good opportunities for caching either.

Would be cool to have a seamless system where you put in your Netflix request and a couple days later, the shows arrive because the aircraft has a Pi loaded with SD cards on it and boots at ground level.

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

#164

Post by derekp7 »

Question -- I'm assuming most ISPs have something in their terms that prohibit a customer from sharing the connection. So with Amazon inducing a violation of customer terms of service, I wonder if ISPs will go after the customers, or go directly after Amazon for triggering the violations?

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

#165

Post by prepend »

teknopaul wrote: post #152
wearywanderer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Legally, every Amazon device user agreed to a TOS that lets Amazon do whatever they want and change at any time.

So we’re kind of lucky they at least announced it as they could have just turned it on and opted everyone in.

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

#166

Post by Dah00n »

sokoloff wrote: post #140
mercora wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would periodically get it working and then it would periodically break. wait a second... it worked sometimes? without doing any routing trickery or something? If you did some trickery maybe the devices sometimes chose to speak ipv6 but could not?

Oh no, I was trying different bits of routing trickery. I'm pretty sure if I sat down and gave it a solid 3 hours straight of methodical effort, that I'd have figured it out once and for all. Instead, I would have 5-10 minutes total per attempt, try something , see if it worked or didn't, then the next time I tried the Chromecast (possibly weeks later), it wouldn't always be repeatable. I also had the Casts being pow…

Did you block Google's DNS IPs? That will break Chromecast in strange ways.

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

#167

Post by bitL »

shagie wrote: post #48
snegu wrote: post #13

I'm curious - is it an altruistic act to leave this functionality enabled? I'm all for making wifi access easier for people.

Various use case stories... You've got an Alexa, your neighbor has a Ring. The network goes out on your neighbor's house. The Ring can then use your Alexa provided sidewalk network to send a notification to your neighbor about a package or whatever. Someone makes Tile like product that can use Sidewalk to track its location. The sidewalk extends its range and accuracy. Right now, it really appears to be just Ring dev…

How do you know you really disabled it? What if it does the same as Google that was recording location data and then uploaded them right after you established a WiFi connection? What if Amazon devices would do that a few times a day without you noticing, and the "disable Sidewalk" button would just mean "do it less frequently"?

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

#168

Post by prepend »

ikiris wrote: post #120
asdff wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they are stealing 500MB of your cap if they aren't compensating you.

As exchange for their otherwise unpaid service from those devices, they're using a fraction of your potentially capped internet if you happen to be in a market with such poor competition and/or poor regulatory environment that your service is capped.

> unpaid

I paid $200 (although much cheaper now) for my echo years ago. This isn’t a free device and the services it provides cost me actual money to be able to use. Pretty funny to spin this as “you paid $200 for this device, but all the services on it are free.”

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

#169

Post by Dah00n »

local_dev wrote: post #148
monkeynotes wrote: post #103

Why the dickens isn't this opt-in? Now we live in a world where a corp can sit on your own home network and do business using your bandwidth without you explicitly agreeing. Not to mention the potential for security issues.

We all know the answer to this. It absolutely should be opt-in, but they know that around 96% of people will never opt-in. See: iOS 14.5 privacy changes.

Like Apple Amazon will change to OPT-IN when it is in their own interest and likely only after killing off some competitors. So maybe in a few years time..

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

#170

Post by Dah00n »

beezischillin wrote: post #100
kstrauser wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this, too. Apple: Their device: "Hi, I'm an AirTag! This is my serial number!" Your device: "hey Apple, I was at (X, Y) when I saw this serial number." Amazon: Their device: "Hi, can I send traffic through your network?" Your device: "sure, buddy!" They're so fundamentally different that I pretty much assume a bad faith argument from people who say they're similar.

The other major difference is that you directly benefit from Find My and you can also turn it off any time you want.

It's a pretty weak argument when it fits both devices. In reality both are bad, one is just very bad.
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